NOOK is an artist residency by THIS JANUARY, a creative agency in Washington, DC. The idea is simple: give one artist at a time the space, support, and freedom to make work on their own terms. No commercial strings, no creative briefs, no obligations beyond showing up and putting in the work.
APPLY FOR VOLUME II →Parsa Afsharjavan
“Obscurities”
Over the past eight weeks, NOOK became less about a space and more about a way of thinking. What initially felt like a constraint revealed itself as a framework — one that required adaptation, precision, and a willingness to work without excess. In that sense, OBSCURITIES was not just produced during the residency, it was shaped by it.
The works reflect a shift toward restraint. Six sculptural pieces and one functional object emerged through a process of reducing noise — materially, visually, and conceptually. Each piece exists somewhere between surface and structure, ambiguity and intention. Rather than over-explaining, the work asks to be experienced slowly, allowing meaning to build over time.
Parsa Afsharjavan
“Obscurities”
The AI Frontier
Our second volume of the NOOK program is now accepting applications. For this edition, we're excited to explore the cutting edge of AI together: the possibilities with these tools is so enormous, yet everyday life gets in the way of stretching, pushing, pulling, and experimenting with them to their full potential.
We're looking for one tinkerer, noodler, or obsessive experimenter who is doing something genuinely interesting with AI — not necessarily art in the traditional sense, but something with AI that makes people lean in and ask “how did you do that?” If you're building weird things with these tools and just need the time and space to go deeper, we'd love to hear from you.