It’s with great excitement that Centrum announces the 2023 Curator & Arts Worker Residency. This two-week, invitational program brings together a range of specialists working independently, within galleries, museum, or arts organizations to support other artists and help the arts field thrive. This year, five community-minded and boundary-breaking organizers are invited to spend time at Centrum re-charging, finding focus, and connecting with others about key issues in the field. These individuals will be provided with stipends, lodging, studio space, and opportunities to gather, as well as spend time in the park and all that Port Townsend has to offer.

This year’s selection of curators and arts workers were nominated by a committee of advisors. Many thanks to Berette Macauley, Tonya Lockyer, and Asia Tail for their help in bringing this group together.

Brittney Frantece

Brittney Frantece is a writer, artist, educator, curator, and Ph.D. candidate at University of Washington (UW). Her work engages concepts of speculation, horror, and magic. She engages Black literary and visual arts to find new ways of thinking, being, and knowledge productions Black imaginations offer. She has conducted workshops and courses for UW’s English and American Ethnic Studies departments, The Northwest School, and the Henry Art Gallery. Her writing has appeared in Variable West, Black Embodiments Studio Journals, and various art writing collections. She curated Black Invention in 3 Parts (2023) at Soil Art Gallery, Portraits of Ecstatic Feeling: Al Smith Collection (2022) for MOHAI and Queer Imaginations (2021) at the Jacob Lawrence Gallery in Seattle. Brittneyfrantece.com

Kari Karsten

A member of the Seneca nation, Kari holds an MA in Museology from the University of Washington and a BS in Communications and Rhetorical Studies with a minor in visual culture from Syracuse University. She is currently the gallery manager for the Columbia City Art Gallery. Her previous experiences have included work at Seattle Art Museum, Seneca-Iroquois National Museum, Mount Rainier Curatorial Department, ArtRage Gallery, and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Recently Kari curated “arnaq, hana’ack, smɁem” at Columbia City Art Gallery and “Indigenous Matrix: Northwest Women Printmakers” at Seattle Art Museum. As an Indigenous individual, her work centers on decolonization practices and providing well-rounded representations of marginalized communities.

Roya Amirsoleymani

Roya Amirsoleymani is Artistic Director & Curator of Public Engagement at Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA) in Portland, Oregon, where she co-curates interdisciplinary performance, visual art exhibitions, public programs, and the Time-Based Art Festival of contemporary dance, experimental theatre, visual art, performance, sound, music, film/video, and community engagement. She co-directs PICA’s Creative Exchange Lab residency for international, national, and local artists, as well as Precipice Fund, part of the Warhol Foundation’s Regional Regranting Program. Roya has been instrumental in expanding PICA’s initiatives and commitments concerning access, equity, inclusion, critical inquiry, research, writing, and partnerships, with attention to the specifics of contemporary art, performance, and their social, political, and cultural contexts. Additionally, Roya works on independent curatorial and cultural initiatives and also writes about contemporary art, often experimentally, in conversation with personal subject matter. Locally, nationally, and internationally, she has presented at conferences; written for publications; sat on numerous grant and award panels; and served on steering and advisory committees. She holds a B.A. in Contemporary Visual Culture & Gender Studies (Johnston Center for Integrative Studies, California), and a Master’s in Arts Management (University of Oregon). She is committed to reimagining institutions in collaboration with their communities, in order to realize a more just art world and whole world.

Kari Karsten

Roya Amirsoleymani

Catalina Cantú (not pictured)

Catalina Cantú (Xicana) is of Indigenous Mexican/Madeiran heritage born in San Francisco, California. Before moving to Washington, Cantú lived on the border in Brownsville, Texas, where the Cantú family has lived since it was México. Her immigrant maternal grandparents came to California from Madeira, an island colonized by the Portuguese, west of North Africa. Cantú is a multi-genre writer, interdisciplinary artist, social justice activist, Jack Straw Fellow, and Alum of VONA/Voices, and The Mineral School. She has received funding from Artists’ Trust, Hugo House, Centrum, and Hedgebrook. Cantú’s poems and stories have been published widely and anthologized. She has earned a B.A. in La Raza Studies, and a J.D. from the University of Washington, where she was a co-founding member of the groundbreaking Latinx groups MEChA, and Teatro del Piojo. As a volunteer attorney, she managed the King County Bar Association Bilingual Spanish Legal Clinic. Cantú has produced eighteen literary events and performed my poetry and prose in thirty-two venues. Her leadership and service include, among many others, the following: Co-founding Member and Board President, La Sala Latinx Artists’; Board Member, UNESCO Seattle City of Lit; Member, Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI); Seattle BIPOC Arts Leader, Seattle University Arts Ecosystem Research Project; Panelist, Artists of Color Expo & Symposium (A.C.E.S.); and Member/former organization Chair, Los Norteños NW Latino Writers.