How to Decide If You Should Do an Artist Residency and How to Choose Which Ones to Apply To

KODA Artist Residency. Exhibition view of Rowan Renee: Solo Exhibition. 2022. Photo by Argenis Apolinario.

Artist residencies are often presented as self-evidently valuable. They appear in professional advice as milestones, on CVs as signals of seriousness, and in institutional language as gifts of time and space. Yet contemporary writing on artistic practice, social context, and cultural infrastructure suggests that residencies are better understood as specific working conditions rather than universal goods. They shape how artists labor, relate to institutions, and position themselves within larger systems of value.

Deciding whether to pursue an artist residency and determining which artist residency programs are worth applying to, requires more than aspiration. It requires an understanding of how residencies function structurally, what kinds of labor they enable or extract, and how they intersect with an artist’s actual needs at a given moment.

Begin With Time as a Material Condition

Across recent writing on contemporary art, time emerges as one of the central pressures shaping artistic practice. In Art and Social Practices, Shannon Jackson describes how artistic labor is increasingly stretched across administrative, relational, and affective demands, leaving limited space for sustained inquiry. She notes that “the conditions that support art-making are rarely visible, yet they fundamentally determine what kinds of work are possible.”

Artist residencies intervene directly in this condition. They temporarily reorganize time by removing or suspending other obligations. When an artist’s practice is constrained by fragmentation rather than lack of ideas, a residency can provide structural relief. When time is not the limiting factor, the same residency may offer little more than symbolic validation.

This distinction is critical. Residencies are often pursued because they are expected, not because they are needed. Treating artist residency programs as default steps rather than targeted tools risks reinforcing the very scarcity they are meant to address.

Distinguish Support From Symbolic Capital

One of the reasons residencies hold such professional weight is their role in institutional signaling. In The Rules of Art, Pierre Bourdieu’s framework is frequently revisited by contemporary scholars to explain how recognition circulates within cultural fields. While Bourdieu’s text predates the current residency economy, later writers extend his analysis to show how residencies function as markers of legitimacy within curatorial and funding ecosystems.

In The Artist as Worker, Bojana Kunst argues that artists are increasingly asked to demonstrate flexibility, mobility, and availability as forms of value in themselves. Residencies often reward these traits. The ability to relocate, self-fund gaps, and remain productive under changing conditions becomes part of what is being selected.

Understanding this dynamic helps artists differentiate between residencies that materially support their work and those that primarily generate symbolic capital. Both have value, but they are not interchangeable. Applying without recognizing this difference can lead to overinvestment in prestige at the expense of sustainability.

Assess Capacity Without Romanticizing Sacrifice

A significant body of recent research challenges the normalization of sacrifice in creative labor. In Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam War Era, Julia Bryan-Wilson traces how artists have historically resisted the expectation that commitment requires personal depletion. Contemporary residency culture often revives this expectation under the language of opportunity.

Even funded artist residencies may require artists to absorb costs related to housing, childcare, healthcare, or lost income. Unfunded residencies rely even more heavily on artists’ personal resources. These conditions are important, and they can be a gate to participation, or success in a residency or art career. They shape who can participate and whose practices are supported.

Capacity should be understood as a structural condition rather than a personal failing. If a residency introduces financial or emotional instability that outweighs its benefits, declining it is a form of professional clarity, not disengagement.

Match Residency Structure to How You Actually Work

Different artist residency programs support fundamentally different modes of practice. Studio-based residencies privilege extended, independent making. Research-based residencies support reading, writing, archival work, and conceptual development. Socially engaged and site-responsive residencies center collaboration, listening, and long-term relationship building. Rural residencies emphasize immersion and withdrawal, while urban residencies offer density, dialogue, and institutional proximity.

Grant Kester’s writing on dialogical and socially engaged art is especially relevant here. In The One and the Many, Kester emphasizes that practices grounded in dialogue require time, trust, and ethical commitment that cannot be compressed into short-term outputs. Residencies that foreground engagement without providing sufficient duration or support risk instrumentalizing community interaction.

Choosing a residency that does not align with your working method can create friction even in otherwise respected programs. The question is not whether a residency is competitive, but whether its structure supports the kind of labor your practice actually requires.

Account for the Labor Residencies Produce

Residencies do not eliminate labor; they redistribute it. Application processes require unpaid work, often repeated across dozens of programs. Once accepted, artists may be expected to document their process, participate in public programs, or perform emotional and relational labor, particularly in community-facing contexts.

In Social Works, Shannon Jackson cautions against ignoring the infrastructural labor that sustains socially engaged art. She writes that when this labor is made invisible, it becomes easier for institutions to benefit from it without adequately supporting it. Artist residencies often depend on this invisibility.

Reading residency descriptions closely, speaking with past residents, and paying attention to informal expectations can clarify what kinds of labor a program assumes artists will provide.

Apply Selectively and With Intent

Research on professional sustainability in the arts consistently points toward alignment rather than volume. Applying broadly to artist residency programs may feel proactive, but it often leads to exhaustion and shallow applications. Strong applications emerge from specificity. They articulate why a particular residency supports a particular moment in a practice.

Limiting applications to a small number of well-aligned programs allows artists to invest time thoughtfully rather than reactively. One residency that genuinely supports your needs can reshape a practice more effectively than several misaligned opportunities.

Residencies do not accrue value simply by accumulation. Treating them as collectibles reinforces scarcity logic rather than long-term stability.

Situate Residencies Within a Longer Practice Arc

Residencies are temporary by design, but their effects are often delayed. Research-oriented residencies may support work that emerges years later. Socially engaged residencies may establish relationships that evolve slowly. Studio-based residencies may recalibrate a practice without producing immediate outcomes.

Thinking in one to three-year horizons helps contextualize a residency’s value. When deciding which residency to apply for, length, and if they should apply at all, artists should ask themselves the following questions:

• Does it support the work you want to continue?

• Does it connect you to conversations or contexts that matter?

• Does it stabilize your practice rather than destabilize it?

Residencies are most useful when understood as infrastructural supports rather than achievements in themselves.

Contemporary research on artistic labor and cultural infrastructure makes clear that artist residencies are neither inherently supportive nor inherently extractive. Their value depends on timing, structure, and alignment. Deciding whether to pursue an artist residency requires clarity about need and capacity. Choosing which artist residency programs to apply to requires attention to labor, resources, and long-term goals.

When approached deliberately, residencies can offer rare conditions for sustained practice. When pursued uncritically, they can reproduce precarity under the language of opportunity. Treating residencies as tools rather than milestones allows artists to engage with them on terms that support longevity and care.

Works Cited

Social Works: Performing Art, Supporting Publics. Routledge, 2011.

The One and the Many: Contemporary Collaborative Art in a Global Context. Duke University Press, 2011.

The Artist as Worker. Zero Books, 2015.

Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam War Era. University of California Press, 2009.