Container Artist Residency and ZIM Integrated Shipping Services are pleased to launch Container Artist Residency 01, a unique artist-in-residence program that takes place onboard commercial cargo ships. As the inaugural edition of this program, the residency invites visual artists from around the world to produce artworks while voyaging into the heart of international commerce. Kicking off with an open call for artists in October 2015 and the hosting of artist residencies at sea in early 2016, the project culminates in a set of international exhibitions. Working at the dynamic intersection of industry and culture, Container Artist Residency 01 seeks to forge new connections between individual practices and vast global networks.

Container Artist Residency 01 will host seven selected artists with a fully-funded trip onboard a cargo vessel on a route of their choice. Each artist will receive studio space for working and accommodation in the ship’s cabins for up to three weeks, in addition to an honorarium, return travel allowance, and production budget. The artists are expected to explore their practice within this exceptional environment, with the aim of producing artworks that will be shown in a traveling international exhibition in 2016–2017. A distinguished jury consisting of project curator PREM KRISHNAMURTHY (Project Projects and P!), SOFIA HERNANDEZ CHONG CUY (Curator of Contemporary Art, Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros), NIELS VAN TOMME (Curator of the Bucharest Biennale 2016), XIAOYU WENG (Associate Curator, Guggenheim Museum), and MAAYAN STRAUSS (artist and founder of Container Artist Residency) selected seven winning artists to choose their own routes and create artworks for exhibition in 2016. The residency was open to visual artists in all career stages, who were able to apply through an open call for proposals. The selected artists for Container Artist Residency 01 are Mari Bastashevski, Tyler Coburn, Revital Cohen & Tuur Van Balen, Erin Diebboll, Ferenc Gróf, Christopher Page, and Samson Young. Container Artist Residency identifies the shipping industry as a driving cultural and economic force in the contemporary world, and encourages artists to rethink their practice from this unique perspective. By rendering existing infrastructures as new environments for artistic production, ZIM and Container Artist Residency hope to provide artists with a different outlook and a meaningful opportunity for professional and creative development.

ABOUT THE ORGANIZERS Since 1945, ZIM INTEGRATED SHIPPING SERVICES has provided creative operational and logistical solutions to customers. Over the course of 70 years, the company has grown to become a leading force in the shipping industry and expanded into a network of vast geographical reach founded on a tradition of excellence. MAAYAN STRAUSS (Founder and Director, Container Artist Residency) is a New York-based multidisciplinary artist. Her practice examines infrastructures, labor, and new platforms while reflecting on the nature and conditions of contemporary artistic production. In addition to her installation work, her projects include the Container Artist Residency and Sushi Bar gallery in Brooklyn. Strauss was also an editor for Art Handler, a magazine dedicated to the behind-the-scenes working practices of the art industry. Strauss received her MFA in photography from Yale School of Art and a B.Arch degree from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem. She has exhibited in museums and galleries internationally, including The Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, The Israel Museum in Jerusalem, Storefront for Art and Architecture, Andrea Meislin Gallery, and the Shenzhen Architecture Biennale. PREM KRISHNAMURTHY (curator, Container Artist Residency 01) is a New York-based designer and curator. As a co-founder of multidisciplinary design studio Project Projects, he has worked with museums, artists, architects, and non-profit organizations internationally. Project Projects is the recipient of the Cooper Hewitt’s 2015 National Design Award for Communication Design, the United States’ highest distinction in the field. Prem is also the director/curator of P!, a critically-acclaimed gallery space in New York City’s Chinatown that reinvents existing exhibition and institutional formats through collaborations with artists and designers. He is currently on faculty at the Bard College Center for Curatorial Studies.