studio program_Raffaela Naldi Rossano
May-June, 2025
We are excited to introduce Raffaela Naldi Rossano (@raffaelanaldirossano), 99 Canal's current artist in residence, using Studio 4 to create the next iteration of ‘Tentacular Bed’ which premiered at the Sharjah Biennale 2025, titled “to carry.”
Tentacular Bed is a sculptural platform composed of modular fragments forming an oversized, reconfigurable bed. Initiated in 2022, it explores intimacy, collective habitation, and spatial negotiation. Inspired by the mythical Tethys Ocean and the Mediterranean, its bicaudate siren-like form merges imaginary and digital geographies into movable wooden structures. Crafted from trees linked to southern mythologies and fitted with musical strings, the sculptures serve as sound instruments when activated by the audience. Organic, site-specific materials form the soft parts, embedding layered marine narratives. As a relational work, Tentacular Bed embodies Naldi Rossano’s ethos of creating liminal space between the domestic and the oceanic.
Raffaela Naldi Rossano is a multi-disciplinary artist working across installation, sculpture, moving images, sound and language. Her artworks are research-driven and process-based, intended as relational vehicles that seek to trigger new possible relationships, both psychological and socio-political, between spaces, bodies and objects.
Through her immersive installations, Naldi Rossano invites audiences to engage with the evolving narratives embedded in spaces and materials. She is currently a researcher at the department of Art & Theory at the New School, New York City.
Sentimento Mediterraneo_ Flash Art Magazine_2023
Studio Program | 99 Canal
The Studio Program is a one to three-month opportunity for emerging and mid-career artists based both within and outside New York City.
Collaborating with artists, galleries, and institutions, our selection process draws on the insights of the local creative community to ensure a continuously diverse and vibrant studio cohort.
The program initially launched in 2022 as a response to the lack of affordable spaces in Manhattan and provides access to an intimate and context-specific environment to work in.