We Go as They: Studio Museum Artists in Residence 2016–17 is the latest in the annual exhibitions from the Artist-in-Residence program at the Studio Museum. The title makes reference to one of the most significant aspects of the Museum’s residency: the community of artists, curators, and Museum staff that surround and nurture the program. Autumn Knight (b. 1980), Julia Phillips (b. 1985), and Andy Robert (b. 1984) have spent the year in close conversation with each other, negotiating the physical and mental boundaries that come with working in close proximity to one another. 

Investigating the space between abstraction and figuration, Robert created a series of nocturne paintings of Harlem scenes that formally engages the history of painting, from French social realism to the Harlem Renaissance to Pop Abstraction. Phillips's seemingly functional metal and ceramic objects relate to the human body and invite the viewer to imagine a potential use. Working with physical relations as a metaphor, Phillips makes reference to psychological, social, gender, and racial power dynamics. In her installation and performance, Knight continues her investigation of the flexible boundaries of identity and psyche through her fictional talk show, Sanity TV, where she promotes neither sanity nor insanity.