Program Overview
The BMoCA + Swoon International Artists Residency (IAR) exists to invite artists from around the world to explore their practice within the Boulder community. In this 4-6 week long residency, visiting artists are given opportunities to meet new collaborators, and to explore new materials and practices. IAR emphasizes the importance of a meaningful, multi-layered cultural exchange and immersion into new environments as a means of enriching one’s artistry.
Swoon Art House has recently partnered with the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver to host artist residencies for notable national artists to foster collaboration between the arts community of Boulder and Denver.
The program is run as a collaborative effort between the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, the Swoon Art House, and other artists and educators in the Boulder community. The collective goal of the program’s administrative team is to give artists the time to focus and investigate their own practice, and to become involved in the Boulder community.

Mission Statement
“The BMoCA + Swoon International Artists Residency provides international creatives with the studio space, resources, time, and freedom to realize expansive works of their imagination. The residency fosters the growth of emerging and established artists, musicians, writers, curators, and other creatives by encouraging them to take risks, experiment, and explore their creativity.”

Residency Details
A typical Residency lasts 4-6 weeks, and scheduling is flexible based on individual timelines of artists. Artists are offered a generous stipend, and provided lodging at Swoon Art House. Artists are paired with community collaborators local to Boulder, CO, based on shared areas of interest and/or the technical demands of their work. In addition, there are two main events organized on behalf of each artist:
1.) an Artist Talk, in which the resident artist is able to share about their work and process with the community; and
2.) a Dinner, in which invited guests and donors of the program are gathered to honor the time and work of the artist during their residency.

Current Resident

2023 / Emir Klepo is a visual artist who specializes in the mediums of photography and film. He received his MFA from the Department of Graphic Design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Sarajevo and is currently a professor of photography at the Graphic Design and Multimedia Department at International Burch University. Additionally, he serves as the Dean of the Faculty of Education and Humanities at the same university.
Klepo’s work explores the significance of mementos and the fluid nature of memory. He is fascinated by how objects can hold profound meaning and evoke memories that we believed were forgotten. Through his photography and film work, Klepo seeks to capture the way in which our perceptions of the past can shift over time.
Klepo’s artistic practice also involves an exploration of the boundaries between motion and still photography. He is interested in the relationship between factual and abstract visuals and how they contribute to the narrative and contextual value of an image. He believes that this combination can create a powerful storytelling experience that engages the viewer on multiple levels.
In addition to his academic and artistic pursuits, Klepo has also achieved great success in his commercial career as an advertising, documentary, fashion photographer, and filmmaker. His unique approach to visual storytelling has earned him recognition and accolades in the industry. Klepo’s ability to seamlessly blend his artistic vision with commercial demands has made him a sought-after collaborator for a diverse range of clients.
Upcoming Residents

2024 / Asim Waqif, a Dehli-based artist, studied architecture at the School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi. After initially working as an art-director for film and television he later started making independent video and documentaries before moving into a dedicated art-practice.
His recent projects have attempted a crossover between architecture, art and design, with a strong contextual reference to contemporary urban-design and the politics of occupying/intervening/using public spaces. Some of his projects have developed within abandoned and derelict buildings in the city that act like hidden activity-spaces for marginalized people.
Concerns of ecology and anthropology often weave through his work and he has done extensive research on vernacular systems of ecological management, especially with respect to water, waste and architecture. His artworks often employ manual processes that are deliberately pain-staking and laborious while the products themselves are often temporary and sometimes even designed to decay. He has worked in sculpture, site-specific public installation, video, photography, and more recently with large-scale interactive installations that combine traditional and new media technologies.

2025 / Paula Nascimento is an architect and independent curator with degrees from the Architectural Association School of Architecture and the LSB University in London. Has collaborated with architecture studios in Oporto and London before founding Beyond Entropy Africa with Stefano Pansera. This research-based studio operated in architecture-urbanism-visual arts and geopolitics and was active between 2011 and 2016. Paula has also been a consultant on various projects, including the Angola Pavilion for Expo Milano 2015 and Expo Dubai 2020 and often collaborates with different artist institutions and collectives, both on the African continent and internationally. Between 2012 and 2020, she was a founding and active member of Colectivo Pés Descalços, a Luanda-based multi-disciplinary collective developing projects in the cultural field. Since 2019 Paula has been the curator of the African Galleries at Arco Lisbon. Currently, she is the Chair of the Artistic Committee at Nesr Art Foundation, a member of the Advisory Board of Hangar Center for Artistic Research, an associate Curator of the VII Lubumbashi Biennial, and a recipient of the 2022 Okwui Enwezor Fellowship Research Grant from the Independent Curators International.
Past Residents

2023 / Caledonia Curry, known as Swoon, is a contemporary artist and filmmaker recognized around the world for her pioneering vision of public artwork.Through intimate portraits, immersive installations and multi-year community based projects, she has spent over 20 years exploring the depths of human complexity by mobilizing her artwork to fundamentally re-envision the communities we live in toward a more just and equitable world. She is best known as one of the first women Street Artists to gain international recognition in a male-dominated field, pushing the conceptual limits of the genre and paving the way for a generation of women Street Artists.
Her recent work has been focused on the relationship of trauma and addiction. Through community partnerships that center compassion and the transformative power of art, Curry draws on her personal history growing up in an opioid addicted family as a catalyst for connection and healing. Over the past 10 years, she has founded and developed collaborative multi-year projects in Braddock and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; New Orleans, Louisiana; and Komye, Haiti, that address crises ranging from natural disasters to the opioid epidemic.
She is currently developing a full length narrative movie which will bring together drawing, immersive installation, stop motion animation and her collaborative work, with the traditions of storytelling through film.

Website




- Images courtesy of James Tapscott

- Images courtesy of Amalia Pica

- Images courtesy of Tomoko Sauvage

Smilde’s work consists of installations, sculptures and photography. He explores the physical de-
construction and re-construction of materials; light, space, atmosphere and experience in relation to his architectural environment, creating a new moment between the realms of reality and the temporal. Website
- Images courtesy of Berndnaut Smilde
Board Members
Rebecca DiDomenico was born in Greenbrae, California. She attended school at Claremont College, Tribhuvan University in Nepal and graduated from the University of Colorado with a BA in English Literature. In DiDomenico’s world, there is no separation between art and life, studio and home. Her work is concerned with the collision and interpenetration of various forms of nature, mythology, art history and metaphysics.

