School of Visual Arts director participates in residency at Santa Fe Art Institute

Vagner Mendonça Whitehead, director of the School of Visual Arts in the Penn State College of Arts and Architecture, recently completed a month-long artist residency at the Santa Fe Art Institute (SFAI), where he worked on a series of large-scale silverpoint drawings related to “Left Listening,” an ongoing knitting project he started in 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and racial unrest in the United States. Through loom-knitting while listening to audiobooks on the history of racism in the United States, Mendonça Whitehead seeks to create a metaphorical space for empathy and to occupy actual space with woven thread.

The 2025 theme for SFAI’s International Thematic Residency Program, celebrating its tenth anniversary this year, is “Community of Practice.” According to the SFAI website, the theme “transcends geographical boundaries to come together around shared values of critical inquiry and cultural exchange.” Living and working alongside 12 artists, Mendonça Whitehead experienced a variety of ways in which artists engage with communities through care, commitment, activism and awareness. The residents carried out unique projects dealing with ecology, pollution, personal history, neurodiversity, feminism and healthcare, among other topics.

SFAI selected 50 resident artists for the 2025 program, in which smaller overlapping groups resided throughout the year. They worked with SFAI staff to host events, activities and a group exhibition open to the public. Mendonça Whitehead carried out a knitted portrait of his cohort, titled “Left Listening: Conversations on Oppression, Love and More,” which abstractly portrayed time spent engaged in dialogue with each resident relating to their art and community practices. Upon his return to Penn State, Mendonça Whitehead created a similar piece, titled “Left Listening: Conversations on Freedom, Love and More,” at the HUB-Robeson Art Alley as part of the “Capacities of Care” exhibition curated by his colleague Aaron Knochel, Penn State associate professor of art education. This recent project engaged students, faculty and community members, where a safe space was created for complex conversations.

SFAI is an independent, non-profit arts organization forging critical inquiry and cultural exchange among artists, creative practitioners and the broader community. The institute supports and amplifies dynamic artistic practices that engage complex social issues, inspire individual transformation and inform collective action.