DISPATCHES, a 2026 Fellowships Journal
This October, our six ArtsLink International Fellows begin their in-person residencies.
After months of connecting from afar, these six talented individuals from Palestine, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, Hungary, and Uzbekistan are now with their Fellowships host organizations in the US and Europe.
Over the next five weeks they will be immersed in exchanges, collaborations, and new connections.
This year’s residencies take a new shape. To keep supporting artists affected by current US travel restrictions, we developed a new fellowship format: Fellows who cannot travel to the US (Nabila Horakhsh from Afghanistan. and Areej Ashhab from Palestine) are paired with both a US host and an international host. Their residencies take place at international locations, with the US host joining in person. The result is a three-way collaboration between artist, host country, and US partner, creating an enriched, tripartite collaboration that benefits everyone involved.
DISPATCHES is a live journal documenting their experiences firsthand: weekly notes, photos, and voices from several places at once, and a record of the connections formed along the way.
Jump to a week:
Week 1: Arrivals
Week 2 (Coming soon)
Week 3 (Coming soon)
Week 4 (Coming soon)
Week 5 (Coming soon)
2026 ArtsLink Fellows:
Areej Ashhab, Palestine, artist, architect, and researcher engaging in community land practices and material ecologies
Altynai Osmo, Kyrgyzstan, artist with a practice rooted in Central Asian nomadic heritage and politically driven by social awareness and women’s empowerment
Zumrad Mirzalieva, Uzbekistan, photographer and filmmaker focusing on the issues of agency, migration and identity
Mátyás Tóth, Hungary, a puppet and theater artist working with issues of social impact and responsibility
Nabila Horakhsh, Afghanistan/Germany, artist and curator working with the topics of oppression, religious extremism and gender discrimination
Kseniia Opria, Ukraine, curator, editor, and filmmaker specializing in documentary and experimental cinema. She explores the intersection of civilian and military realities during wartime.
Week 1 - ARRIVALS
This year’s six Fellows began their residencies in different ways. Nabila and Areej are working with European hosts, since current travel restrictions prevent them from going to the US, and Zumrad was already in New York when the program began. For Altynai, Mátyás and Kseniia, all three came through safely to the US and were soon with their hosts in Santa Fe, Chicago and New York.
NEW YORK
Kseniia received a warm welcome from the team at DCTV, who showed her around the historic converted firehouse they occupy in downtown Manhattan.
CEC ArtsLink Program Director Zhenia Stadnik joined the welcome group and shared this moment: “I had the pleasure of spending the day with Kseniia Opria here in New York, introducing her to her wonderful hosts at DCTV. I was deeply moved by Kseniia’s reaction to the warm welcome she received from DCTV’s Charlotte Mangin and Dara Messinger. After seeing the space – the historic converted firehouse in downtown Manhattan – and meeting the people there, she said it felt like being in a “temple of documentary cinema,” surrounded by the best colleagues and kindred spirits she could imagine,” Zhenia shared about this special moment.
Her first week stayed just as intense.”The cultural and artistic scene in New York is amazing, and I’m meeting dozens of fascinating people,” Kseniia said. “One evening I spent three hours talking about my film at a workshop, listening to other people’s ideas and it was such a healing experience to end the day with,” she mentionned.
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SANTA FE
Altynai arrived at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), where her host, Sheila A. Rocha, welcomed her. “This week was amazing despite severe jet lag!” Altynai shared. “There’s plenty to do and see!”
She attended a performance by singer Jeremy Dutcher: “So moved to hear Jeremy Dutcher sing in his native Wolastoqiyik language. There are less than 100 speakers of it in the world. It is important to continue centuries old traditions, remember stories and wisdoms of our ancestors. With artists like Jeremy, there is hope for indigenous peoples future. The question is, what each one of of us can and will contribute?”
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CHICAGO
Further north in the Midwest, Mátyás described his first week as“turbulent” but said he “succesfully survived all the stress!”. That’s easy to understand: Matyas had just landed and been welcomed by his host at Public Media Institute in Chicago that he already had an event lined up on the Friday of his first week there, taking part in the Resurge Festival.
𝑹𝒆𝒔𝒖𝒓𝒈𝒆 is a gathering of queer performance artists from across Chicago, presenting bold, risk-taking work. The festival honors queer ancestors, amplifies queer futures, and sparks new possibilities for live art. Taking place at Co-Prosperity, a non-profit art gallery in downtown Chicago, Matyas brought one of his recent performances to a new audience.
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Save the Date!
If you are in New York, on Sunday October 18, Kseniia and her hosts, Charlotte Mangin and Dara Messinger of DCTV will present “Deconstructions: Right to the Truth“, a retrospective of Ukrainian documentary films of the late 1980s and 1990s.
Read our conversation with Kseniia about the project.
Sunday October 18, 2026 | 12PM (TRT 88min)
Firehouse DCTV’s Cinema for Documentary Film | 87 Lafayette Street, NYC 10013🎟 BOOK YOUR TICKETS | Use 20% Discount Code: “docudays”
Fellowships