HOUSTON, TX.- As Contemporary Arts Museum Houston remains closed to the public due to COVID-19 safety considerations, the Museum announced a new program that directly supports artists in a moment when safe, accessible artist space is diminished in Houston. The program—called CAMHLAB—was launched in late October and the initial season will continue into December 2020 when the Museum will begin preparations for its planned reopening in early 2021.

CAMHLAB is an ongoing artist-in-residence initiative that gives the Museum to artists. The program supports artists working within, and in partnership with, the Museum to develop new work and new ideas. Launched immediately following CAMH’s interior renovations in fall 2020, the residency was established in response to effects of COVID-19, particularly the loss of Houston-area performance and rehearsal space, to make CAMH’s galleries safely available for large-scale production and experimentation. Through both short-term residencies within the Museum and long-term collaborations with artists, CAMHLAB offers critical and early-stage direct financial, production, and spatial support of artists’ process and production of new work.

The launch of CAMHLAB comes at an extraordinary moment in CAMH’s 72-year history,” says Hesse McGraw, Executive Director. “The Museum has just completed our first major renovation in nearly 50 years, and our galleries have been closed to the public since March due to the pandemic safety protocols. Our intention is to give the Museum to artists as the first step in re-imagining the Museum at this pivotal moment. We look forward to working with each artist to ensure the residency is maximally beneficial and supportive of their creative process.

Each resident’s process will become public through a limited audience performance, a live stream, exterior project, or a form appropriate to the artist’s specific practice. As with all CAMH public programs, CAMHLAB residencies safely connect artists and audiences through catalytic and unexpected experiences of contemporary art.




The program kicked off last month by welcoming the Houston-based hip hop artist, Tobe Nwigwe and his collective, who transformed the Museum into a visual wonderland as the set design of his soon-to-be-released music video filmed entirely within the Museum. The artist—through social media—surprised his fans with a hashtag challenge to gain extremely limited access into the space and to attend an exclusive premiere of the video and an intimate Q/A session with the artist and collaborators on Saturday, November 7. Through a series of limited, timed-entry tickets, the Museum then welcomed thirty guests every half hour for an opportunity to view the artifacts from the intensive residency in a two-day installation Nwigwe titled Mintxhibition, a title inspired by the specific hue that permeates throughout the artist’s new video production.

The current CAMHLAB participant is the renowned Houston-based collective Hope Stone Dance, who plan to use the Museum as a safe space for rehearsals as they continue to shift their focus from their usual in-person performances to those in the virtual realm. One of the objectives of their time at CAMH is to produce and submit videos to dance film festivals across the nation to showcase Houston’s breadth and professionalism of dance makers and dancers. Plans for safe, accessible, public performances are also scheduled for this CAMHLAB initiative.

Over the course of her six-day intensive residency later this month, multidisciplinary artist, Frewuhn, will facilitate a series of SoundLab performance installations and experiments with collaborators, cultural producers, and thinkers tinkering with the notion of Protest. The labs will be an intermedia exploration of themes of freedom, ecology, decay, repair, and the fluid yet congealed formation one must embody to pass through Protest’s many phases. Set within the white, vacant backdrop of the Museum, the process is very much the project.

In the midst of a pandemic’s trauma, Community Amnesia Therapy—presented by Houston-based artist and anthropologist Marlon Hall—is the season’s final CAMHLAB residency intended to present authentic human connection while remaining socially distanced. Hall states, “the trauma of life can dismember the mind from the body, and the body from the soul and we forget who we are, what we can impact, and sometimes even why we should get out of bed.” Hall, along with a host of collaborators, will mount a series of separate healing experiences thoughtfully orchestrated and delivered through the multisensory use of film, music, art installations, salon dinner parties, and yoga to—as Hall states—“unearth beauty from brokenness."