Artist in Residence South Africa, AIRSA, is a registered NPO 243-824, offering funded artist residencies for emerging, mid-career & established South African and International artists.

Artists in Residence programs give artists the opportunity to live and work outside of their usual environments, providing them with time to reflect, research, and produce work based on the experiences in the given environment. Artists’ residencies have become intrinsic to many artistic careers.

Residencies enable artists to do fieldwork and to work on-site, in order to map out, collect, research and generate new perspectives. This kind of ‘embedded research’ contributes to public and professional awareness. It reinforces the concept of artists’ residencies as cells of knowledge and alternative academies.

We particularly encourage artists to explore ‘place’ as a concept which incorporates the environment and the people who engage with it. We believe that artworks created at our residencies not only imply a respect for place, but also a desire to reveal and comment upon our relationship with it, rather than exploiting it for the sake of art.

The residency process and artworks are documented through video, photography and audio by volunteer photographers & videographers.