NEW YORK, NY.- Topical Cream, the New York arts organization whose mission is to support the work of women and gender non-conforming individuals in contemporary art, is pleased to announce the appointment of critic Laura McLean-Ferris as its 2022 Editor-in-Residence. McLean-Ferris will assume editorial direction of Topical Cream’s features, including commissioning interviews and criticism. She succeeds Topical Cream’s 2021 inaugural Editor-in-Residence Nora N. Khan.
“As the world continues to recover from COVID-19, we are thrilled to bring Laura McLean-Ferris’s humanistic vision of supporting the work and legacies of women and gender non-conforming artists to the Topical Cream Editor-in-Residence program in 2022,” said Topical Cream Founder and Director Lyndsy Welgos (she/her).
“Criticism and writing are essential elements of our artistic ecosystem; they are sites of response, exchange, and thought vital to the flourishing of art, in which I have personally found meaning and inspiration. I’m delighted to be working with Topical Cream—an organization that is committed to supporting women-identifying and gender-non-conforming artists and writers through publishing their work and ideas—as Editor-in-Residence for 2022. I want to use this time to encourage experimental forms of criticism, radical voices, and avant-garde practices, commissioning writing that thinks deeply through and with the work of artists,” said Laura McLean-Ferris, Topical Cream’s 2022 Editor-in-Residence.
The Topical Cream Editor-in-Residence Program was developed in response to the urgent need for institutional support for criticism and experimental journalism as the pandemic shifted priorities within many publications and art organizations. Nominations for the residency were solicited from Topical Cream’s Board of Directors and advisors.
Recent Topical Cream featured artists and contributors include: Mandy Harris Williams, Aria Dean, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Legacy Russell, Tauba Auerbach, and Juliana Huxtable. In 2021, Topical Cream launched an Art Writing Mentorship Program in collaboration with Assembly at Recess. The program is expanding in 2022 to include multiple forms of outreach with the support of The Michael Asher Foundation and Stolbun Foundation.
In 2020, the organization launched its first annual prize for artists and activists whose efforts have made a meaningful impact on their community. The inaugural Topical Cream Prizes were awarded to artist Martine Gutierrez and activist Viva Ruiz. The recipients in 2021 were Carolyn Lazard and Zenat Begum.
Laura McLean-Ferris is a writer and curator based in Turin, Italy, and New York, USA. She is Curator at large at Swiss Institute, New York, where until recently she held the post of Chief Curator. At SI she has curated numerous projects with artists including Olga Balema, Aria Dean, Irena Haiduk, Nancy Lupo, Sandra Mujinga, Jill Mulleady, Shahryar Nashat, Rosemary Mayer, Cally Spooner, and Studio for Propositional Cinema. She is a regular contributor to Artforum, ArtReview, art-agenda, Cura, frieze, Mousse, and Flash Art International, and has authored catalogue essays on the work of Harold Ancart, Nina Beier, Anna-Sophie Berger, Deimantas Narkevičius, Shahryar Nashat, Rachel Rose and Hayley Tompkins, among others. She was the recipient of the 2015 Creative Capital | Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, and her short-form collection The Lacustrine was published in 2016.
