Career Advice for Immigrant Artists | Ghislaine Sabiti

Ghislaine Sabiti is a French/American Congolese-born multidisciplinary artist, painter, glass artist, ceramist sculptor, costume designer, educator, and Bead Project Director at Urban Glass. She grew up on the outskirts of Paris, France, and is now based in New York, NY.

Sabiti studied fine arts at Atelier Chantier du Coq and L’académie de la Grande Chaumière and graduated with honors in fashion design from Atelier Chardon Savard in Paris, France. She further developed her skills by studying glass lamp-work, glass blowing, and photo decals at Urban Glass and ceramics at the ceramic Artshack. She has taught and created a curriculum at several premier institutions, including the Harlem School of Arts, the Peter Valley, Urban Glass, Zimmerli Art Museum, French Institute, Brooklyn College, and Glass Rots.

Sabiti’s work highlights the technical form used in both African and European arts, focusing on form and color. She specializes in creating unique sculptural pieces that blend various techniques such as weaving, braiding, oil painting, ceramic sculpture, and glass sculpture.

She has completed several prestigious fellowships including the The NYFA Incubator for Executive Leaders of Color, Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute’s Innovative Cultural Advocacy Fellowship, DEAR (Digital Evolution/Artist Retention) Fellowship, and New York Foundation of the Arts’ Immigrant Artist Program. She has also been a resident artist at Columbia Clay, Peter Valley School of Craft, ArtYard with CoLabart, Pilchuck Better Together, Urban Glass, Glass Roots, Calabar Gallery and coLABArts, Jamaica Center, and Jamaica Center for Art and Learning. Chashama has nominated Sabiti for an artist residency at the Marcel Breuer House at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund’s The Pocantico Center and Commission for the Lexington Hotel, New York, Salon du Prêt-à-Porter. Additionally, Sabiti was an award winner for the Dupont De Nemours hosiery design competition for DIM Company.

Her work has been exhibited and commissioned nationally and internationally in France and the U.S. at numerous group exhibitions and solo shows including Calabar Gallery, Hamptons Art Fair, Zimmerli Art Museum, El Teatro del Museo Del Barrio with Boys and Girls Harbor, Galabar Gallery, Artshack, Occupy Museum Debt Fair at the Whitney Biennial, MNN El Barrio Firehouse Community Media Center, Atelier Rosal, Westfield State University Arno Maris Gallery, Rio Gallery, Harlem School of the Arts, Brooklyn Film and Art Festival, Small Space Fest, and Poe Park Visitor Center.