Archive of Desire

Robin Coste Lewis

Robin Coste Lewis is the former Poet Laureate of Los Angeles. Her debut collection, Voyage of the Sable Venus (Knopf, 2015), won the National Book Award in 2015. She earned her MFA in poetry from NYU, another master’s degree from Harvard in Sanskrit and theology; as well as a PhD in poetry and visual studies from the University of Southern California. Lewis is the Writer-in-Residence at the University of Southern California’s PhD Program in Creative Writing, and a Ford Foundation Scholar-in-Residence this year at the Museum of Modern Art. Her most recent book, TTOPH (Knopf, 2022), won the PEN Poetry Prize and the NAACP Poetry Prize. Born in Compton, her family is from New Orleans. 

Photo by Abigail Rudner

Julie Mehretu

Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 1970, Julie Mehretu is a world-renowned painter who lives and works in New York City. Mehretu’s practice in painting, drawing, and printmaking engage us in a dynamic visual articulation of contemporary experience, a depiction of social behavior, and the psychogeography of space by exploring palimpsests of history, from geological time to a modern-day phenomenology of the social. Mehretu received a Master's of Fine Art with honors from The Rhode Island School of Design in 1997. Mehretu is a recipient of many awards, including the The MacArthur Award (2005), the Berlin Prize: Guna S. Mundheim Fellowship at The American Academy in Berlin, Germany (2007), and in 2015, she was awarded the US Department of State Medal of Arts Award. A mid-career survey of Mehretu's work recently toured at LACMA (Los Angeles), High Museum (Atlanta), The Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), and The Walker Museum of Art (Minneapolis) from 2019-2023. Her largest European solo exhibition to date entitled, Ensemble, opened March 17, 2024 at Palazzo Grassi in Venice. Mehretu is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and The National Academy of Design. Her global representative is Marian Goodman Gallery. 

Photo © Josephina Santos

Vijay Iyer

Described by The New York Times as a “social conscience, multimedia collaborator, system builder, rhapsodist, historical thinker and multicultural gateway,” Vijay Iyer has carved out a unique path as an influential, prolific, shape-shifting presence in twenty-first-century music. A composer and pianist active and revered across multiple musical communities, Iyer has created a consistently innovative, emotionally resonant body of work over the last twenty-five years, earning him a place as one of the leading music-makers of his generation. His honors include a MacArthur Fellowship, a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a United States Artist Fellowship, three Grammy nominations, the Alpert Award in the Arts, the Greenfield Prize, a Dutch “Edison” Prize, and two German “Echo” awards; he was also voted DownBeat Magazine’s Jazz Artist of the Year four times. He has been praised by Pitchfork as "one of the best in the world at what he does," by the Los Angeles Weekly as “a boundless and deeply important young star,” and by Minnesota Public Radio as “an American treasure.” Iyer’s musical language is indebted to the great composer-pianists from Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk to Alice Coltrane and Geri Allen, the rhythmic traditions of South Asia and West Africa, and the African American creative music movement of the 60s and 70s. In February 2024, Iyer released Compassion (ECM Records), the second recording by his much-admired trio with drummer Tyshawn Sorey and bassist Linda May Han Oh. The New York Times observed, “It’s as if this band wants to both seduce you and discomfit you, stripping you of everything but the ability to think and see for yourself.” Other recent releases include Love In Exile (Verve, 2023), a Grammy-nominated collaboration with vocalist Arooj Aftab and bassist Shahzad Ismaily; Uneasy (ECM Records, 2021), the acclaimed first trio session with Sorey and Oh; Far From Over (ECM, 2017) with the award-winning Vijay Iyer Sextet; and A Cosmic Rhythm with Each Stroke (ECM, 2016) a suite of duets with visionary composer-trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith. Iyer is an active composer for classical ensembles and soloists, with works premiered by Brentano Quartet, Imani Winds, Parker Quartet, Bang on a Can All-Stars, The Silk Road Ensemble, Sō Percussion, International Contemporary Ensemble, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, East Coast Chamber Orchestra, LA Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, Oregon Symphony, American Composers Orchestra, and virtuosi Matt Haimowitz, Mishka Rushdie Momen, Claire Chase, Inbal Segev, Sarah Rothenberg, Shai Wosner, and Jennifer Koh. The Boston Modern Orchestra Project produced a portrait album, Trouble (BMOP/sound 2024), comprising three of Iyer’s orchestral works. Iyer recently served as composer-in-residence at London’s Wigmore Hall, music director of the Ojai Music Festival, and artist-in-residence at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. His scores are published by Schott Music. A tireless collaborator, he has written big-band music for Arturo O’Farrill and Darcy James Argue, remixed classic recordings of Talvin Singh and Meredith Monk, joined forces with legendary musicians Henry Threadgill, Reggie Workman, Zakir Hussain, and L. Subramanian, and developed interdisciplinary work with Teju Cole, Carrie Mae Weems, Mike Ladd, Julie Mehretu, and Prashant Bhargava. Iyer is a tenured professor at Harvard University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Music and the Department of African and African American Studies. He lives in New York City. 

Photo by Ebru Yildiz

Jeffrey Zeigler

Jeffrey Zeigler has released dozens of albums on Nonesuch Records, Deutsche Grammophon, Cantaloupe and Smithsonian Folkways and has appeared with Norah Jones on her album Not Too Late on Blue Note Records. Zeigler’s multifaceted career has led to collaborations with a wide array of artists from Yo-Yo Ma and Tanya Tagaq to Philip Glass and John Zorn and from Laurie Anderson to Siddhartha Mukherjee. While serving as the cellist of the internationally renowned Kronos Quartet for eight seasons, Zeigler was the recipient of the Avery Fisher Prize, the Polar Music Prize, the President’s Merit Award from the Grammys and The Asia Society's Cultural Achievement Award. 

Photo by Axel Dupeux

VisionIntoArt

VisionIntoArt, “always intriguing and frequently beguiling”, is a multimedia production company that “facilitates flamboyant, confounding and enticing collaborations” (New York Times). VIA creates and commissions works that involve various disciplines, presented around the world, and forged from the most exciting, emerging, and established artists living today, as well as interdisciplinary experts including scientists and conservationists. Incubating, producing, and disseminating, VIA projects often bridge impact, community building, and scientific inquiry with the belief that collaboration sustains artistic innovation and promotes a healthier society. VIA’s works range from the Hubble Cantata—the largest communal VR operatic event—to multiplatform works like The Colorado, now viewable on PBS. VIA productions have been seen at Lincoln Center, the Barbican Centre, HIFA in Zimbabwe, The Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Kennedy Center, and through residencies at MASS MoCA and The Park Avenue Armory. The company’s projects include world premieres and tours of work including Con Alma at Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, and at The United Nations for the world's largest equity conference presented by Death of Classical in partnership with Carnegie Hall; Houses of Zodiac at The Broad in Los Angeles, a live Butoh, Ballet, and cello work with film installation presented as part of The Broad’s special exhibition Takashi Murakami: Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow, also seen at the 2022 Romaeuropa Festival in Rome, Italy, and Bang on a Can's 2023 LOUD Weekend at MASS MoCA; Archive of Desire presented as part of the Onassis Foundation’s 2023 New York City-wide festival and international tour, and the forthcoming opera project Sensorium Ex, which cultivates community-centered practices, most recently presented as part of UnMute ArtsAbility Festival in Cape Town (Africa's premier disability-led, inclusive arts festival), and in collaboration with The REACH and Washington National Opera at the Kennedy Center.

Onassis Foundation

The mission of the Onassis Foundation, founded by Aristotle Onassis in 1975, will always be human-centric: to shape and shake society through new ideas, bold discussions, and unexpected connections in arts, healthcare, and education. By building the Onassis National Transplant Center, following the Onassis Cardiac Center in Athens, it creates the conditions to provide health to all, offering the Greek society a hospital for the transplant of solid organs. In education, it has awarded more than 7,500 scholarships to young people worldwide since the late 1970s. Onassis USA, based in New York, includes Onassis ONX (ONassis eXtended realities), an international Onassis Culture platform dedicated to new media art and digital culture. Through Onassis AiR, a program supporting artistic research and practice, the Onassis Foundation fosters a space where the artists themselves set the conditions for their work, supporting its broader ecosystem and global artistic partnerships. Onassis Culture has Onassis Stegi in Athens as its hub, a center of contemporary culture that, through a series of initiatives and works, promotes dialogue about democracy, social and environmental justice, racial and gender equality, and LGBTQIA+ rights. Onassis Stegi's web radio, STEGI.RADIO, highlights new music and ideas, fostering critical thought and connecting audiences across borders. Onassis YouTube Channel features a dynamic range of new productions, digital concerts, documentaries, and discussions, bringing our common digital future into focus.

Onassis.org

The Cavafy Archive

C. P. Cavafy collected and archived his work on a systematic basis, hence creating a unique literary and personal archive. Starting with the acquisition of the Cavafy archive, its digitization, and opening it to the public and researchers, the Onassis Foundation, in collaboration with the Hellenic Foundation for Culture, undertook the restoration of the Cavafy House in Alexandria in early 2022, aiming to turn it into a hub for visitors from all over the world. In May 2024, the Cavafy House reopened its doors to the public. The apartment where C. P. Cavafy lived most of his life and created so many of the works that made him a universal poet has been restored and reconfigured in order to highlight the image of the residence as it was in the years the poet lived, to illuminate his relationship with the city of Alexandria and the impact of his work to this day, but also to transport us back in time. In this way, the Onassis Foundation has created a triad dedicated to the great poet. This includes two physical points of contact with him and his work: the Cavafy Archive in Plaka and the Cavafy House in Alexandria, on Rue Lepsius. The third meeting point is interactive and involves the fully digitized Cavafy archive.