Residency
Currently, C2O is working together with Rentang Art Lab in hosting international contemporary art residency.
RENTANG is Surabaya’s first initiative dedicated to international contemporary art residency and dialogues. We welcome artists, designers, researchers, and creatives in all their diversity for stays of at least one month, inside C2O.
The program is largely self-directed, encouraging residents to pursue their own projects, while also engaging in meaningful exchanges with local artists, collectives, workers and community initiatives to further develop their practices.
Situated in a historic port–industrial city rich with multi-cultural histories, layered with dynamic labour and social movements, RENTANG positions residency as an immersive process of living, researching, creating and connecting with local social and material realities in Surabaya and surrounding areas.
What Rentang residency offers
- Private bed room inside C2O library & collabtive, with 1 single bed, fan and air-conditioner, shared bathroom, shared kitchen, Wi-Fi, included.
- Co-working & library membership in C2O, designed to support interactions with communities as well as doing focused work and deepening research.
- Guided visits and introductions to relevant communities, galleries, artists’ studios, archives, and alternative art spaces in Surabaya and surrounding areas, designed in response to the resident’s area of focus. This generally comes in the form of:
- 2-day tour of Surabaya’s art ecosystem. Dinner, transportation, and entrance fees are covered.
- 1-on-1 meetings, with different curators, artists, activists, and so on. We can also provide some support if you need to travel to surrounding areas such as Yogyakarta, Lawu, but may need to be quoted separately if out of our area scope.
- Venue in C2O for a public program. Residents have the option to host open studios, workshop, community meetings, etc to share your findings, outcomes, or work-in-progress with local audiences, for free or for a fee. Residents are also welcome to independently organise their own public events or activities in venues outside of C2O during their residency.
- Optional documentation support, designed in discussion with the resident, such as 50 raw photos, 1 hour documentation session if doing any public program, or a post-residency podcast.
Residency cost & funding
USD 735 for 1 month.
USD 1,470 USD for 2 months.
This program includes all of the facilities listed above. However, the residency does not cover travel costs, meals, artistic materials, visa, and insurance.
Who can apply & how?
For more detailed updates & how to apply, please communicate directly through RENTANG’s official Instagram, @ren__tang.
Residents
Haxen Fan (residency September – October 2026)
Haxen Fan (b. 1998) is a multidisciplinary artist, photographer, and software engineer based in Taiwan. His work focuses on the traces left through processes of emergence, disappearance, and transformation, as well as the relationship between bodily experience, images, and materiality. His practice spans photography, sculpture, moving image, sound, and artist books.
Rooted in bodily experience and image archives, he approaches the image as a constantly shifting interface between materiality and memory. Through embodied processes of making, he explores the unstable sense of belonging between personal memory, place, and time.
His work has been presented at Knowphotogallery (2026), PHOTO GO PAPER MATTER Photobook Awards (2026), and the 10th Singapore International Photography Festival (SIPF) Dummy Book Award (2026).
Through this residency, Haxen will trace and articulate the layered social and cultural narratives of Surabaya, while developing new work that reflects his ongoing inquiry into lived experience, collective memory, and the possibilities of artistic exchange.
In partnership with C2O Library, Haxen will undertake a one-month residency in Surabaya, engaging with the local context through research, interaction, and experimentation.
Kexin Hong (residency August – September 2026)
Kexin Hong is a Chinese multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker based in the Netherlands. Her work sits at the intersection of collective memory and transgenerational trauma, transposing psychological methods such as Imagery Rescripting into visual practice to explore how imagination and symbolic imagery might reenact and reclaim what history has erased, and what it continues to haunt.
Her work has been presented at W139 Amsterdam, LAB111 Amsterdam, Felix Meritis, Dutch Design Week, ZK/U Berlin, and the 2025 Asia Triennial in Manchester. She has collaborated with scholars, psychotherapists specializing in intergenerational trauma, and diaspora communities across the Netherlands. In 2025, Kexin organized a screening program at ZK/U Berlin that centered on migrant artists. She is also the founder of Echoes from Afar, an Asian online diaspora living archive website.
Her practice has received sustained institutional backing, including support from the Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst (2024), the Creative Industries Fund NL (2025), the Crazy Peach Art Foundation (Top Grant Recipient, 2025), and the Mondriaan Fund (2026).
Through her residency, Kexin centers on intergenerational trauma within the Dutch-Asian diaspora, and on the use of art as a method of reimagining erased memory. Kexin is interested not in trauma as an archive of suffering, but as a site of agency where narrative power can be reclaimed.
In partnership with C2O Library, Kexin will undertake a one-month residency in Surabaya, engaging with the local context through research, interaction, and experimentation.
Stay tuned for upcoming public programs, open studios, and opportunities to engage with the artist throughout her residency. Follow our updates and be part of the process.
Ammar Idris (residency June – July 2026)
🎧 Listen to Rentang Post-Residency Podcast Eps.01 Ammar Idris
Ammar Idris (b. 1999) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice explores alternative modes of thinking and making through materials and processes of meaning-making. His work often engages with memory, human conditions, and emotional landscapes. Working across writing (including sajak), mixed media, video, performance, participatory projects, and installation, Ammar continually pushes the boundaries of creative practice while fostering cross-disciplinary dialogue within contemporary art.
He was a finalist in Bakat Muda Sezaman at the National Art Gallery of Malaysia (2021), and has participated in several residencies and workshops, including Young Artist Talent #11 by the Office of Contemporary Art and Culture (OCAC) in Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand (2020), 3×3 Art Residency by George Town Festival (2021), the 17th CRACK International Art Camp in Kushtia, Bangladesh (2023), and ILTIZAM Seni Art Residency (2025–26).
Through his residency, Ammar will explore and respond to the layered social and cultural narratives of Surabaya, developing new work that reflects his ongoing inquiry into lived experience, collective memory, and the possibilities of artistic exchange.
In partnership with C2O Library, Ammar will undertake a one-month residency in Surabaya, engaging with the local context through research, interaction, and experimentation.
This residency is possible with the support from National Art Gallery Malaysia.