Song Watkins Park in her studio
In January, KAF welcomed three new artists as the cohort for its 2026-2027 Kranzberg Artist in Residency (KAIR) program in Visual Arts: Sukanya Mani, Hayveyah McGowan, and Song Watkins Park. Together, they bring a dynamic range of perspectives and mixed-method practices that reflect the evolving landscape of contemporary art in St. Louis.
Throughout their 18-month residency, these artists have the opportunity to expand their creative practices, develop new work, and engage directly with the community through exhibitions, programs, and conversations supported by the Foundation. Their innovative approaches and commitment to exploration will contribute meaningful dialogue and fresh energy to our artistic ecosystem.
Now nearly halfway through their residency, the resident artists are deeply engaged in this work. Here is an update on where they are with these projects in their own words:
Sukanya Mani
Thooli is an immersive installation through which I explore postpartum identity, maternal memory, and intergenerational healing using fabric, suspended forms, and storytelling. Named after the Tamil word for “cradle,” the work centers the postpartum body as a site of transformation, care, and resilience, expanding conversations about healing within a medical context. Through Thooli, I respond to the erosion of intergenerational knowledge surrounding postpartum healing—traditions that have historically been passed from one generation to the next through touch, ritual, and oral exchange. Drawing from my own experiences and conversations with immigrant and refugee women, I honor these diverse care practices while placing them in dialogue with contemporary medical frameworks.
Hayveyah McGowan
My current body of work explores the intersections of diasporic cosmologies, altar-making, the domestic, and the unseen. Through recurring symbols and gestures, I am interested in how ordinary materials can become vessels for memory, protection, intention, and care. Working across sculpture, textiles, printmaking, and installation, I am developing an evolving visual language that blurs the boundaries between art object and ritual object. My residency has become a space for experimentation, allowing me to expand this language through world-building and immersive environments that invite viewers to consider intuition, ancestry, and the unseen as meaningful ways of understanding the world.
Song Watkins Park
I’ve been working on a series of paintings that explores my identity and how living in St. Louis for the past 10 years has shaped and influenced it. This body of work will be presented in my solo exhibition at the Kranzberg Arts Foundation next spring. In other exciting news, I was recently featured as the cover artist for New American Paintings Midwest Issue 179. In July, I spent a month living and working at the ChaNorth Residency in upstate New York, where I developed a new body of work.
The Visual Arts KAIR is designed to support these outstanding visual artists in a collaborative, resource-rich environment. This residency provides artists with the time, space, and support needed to develop substantial bodies of work, foster collaboration, and fully realize their creative visions.
“This residency has become a space to slow down, experiment, and follow ideas wherever they lead,” McGowan says.
Through developing and managing artistic venues, galleries, studios, and community-based programming, KAF provides essential infrastructure enabling the arts to flourish in the St. Louis region. Our residency program adopts an arts-based approach to community development, aligning resources and investments with community vision and needs. Committed to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, the program supports economic development and cultural sustainability, further positioning St. Louis as a leading arts and entertainment destination.
