Proof Testing: The PrintLab Artist Residency at Brandywine Workshop and Archives
This focused exhibition celebrates the PrintLab Artist Residency (2025–26) at Brandywine Workshop and Archives (BWA) in Philadelphia. An expansion of BWA’s Visiting Artist Residency Program, PrintLab enabled eight interdisciplinary artists to push the boundaries of printmaking. Working with collaborative printers Justine Ditto (BFA, PAFA, ’17) and Alexis Nutini, artists experimented with both traditional printmaking techniques and emerging technologies, including photolithography, woodcut, CNC routing, laser cutting, phototransfer, and animation. With rigorous attention to scale, color, materials, and layering, they explored themes of ancestry and memory, identity and mythology, diaspora and survival.
Proof Testing features eleven works and nine printing blocks created for PrintLab by El Anatsui, Lavett Ballard, Albert Chong, Willie Cole, Kakyoung Lee, Delita Martin, Jocelyn Akwaba Matignon, and Didier William. It also includes two prints from 2018, demonstrating how two of the participating artists built on their previous BWA residencies. By placing finished prints alongside working materials, Proof Testing illuminates how PrintLab served as an incubator for experimentation and innovation.
Proof Testing is organized in partnership with Brandywine Workshop and Archives. A concurrent exhibition, PrintLab: Material Futures, is on view at BWA June 18–October 26, 2026.
PrintLab at Brandywine Workshop and Archives has been supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.
Featured Artwork: Delita Martin (b. Conroe, TX, 1972), The Little Rootkeeper, 2025. Photolithograph with hand-applied ink on paper, 31 ½ x 24 ½ in. Collaborative printer: Justine Ditto (BFA, PAFA, ’17). Brandywine Workshop and Archives. © Delita Martin.
Featured Artists & Works
- El Anatsui
- Lavett Ballard
- Albert Chong
- Willie Cole
- Kakyoung Lee
- Delita Martin
- Jocelyn Akwaba Matignon
- Didier William
About the Brandywine Workshop and Archives (BWA)
Founded in 1972 as the Brandywine Graphic Workshop in the Spring Garden neighborhood of North Philadelphia, Brandywine Workshop and Archives (BWA) is a non-profit art institution that has broadened opportunities for BIPOC and emerging artists to create limited edition prints, often for the first time. BWA preserves and promotes the art of fine art printmaking by providing a space for the exploration of traditional, contemporary, and innovative printing technologies. With a clear focus on collaboration between artists and printers, BWA serves as a portal to global cultural perspectives and audiences through easy access to its art collections and learning tools. BWA strives to educate, inspire, and build broad, inclusive communities through its artist residencies, exhibitions, collections, public programming, and mentoring programs that spur creative expression and offer career pathways in the field of visual arts.
News and Press
MEDIA / PRESS: Please email marketing@pafa.org for access to a folder of graphics and related information.
EXHIBITION SUPPORT
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Proof Testing is organized in partnership with Brandywine Workshop and Archives. A concurrent exhibition, PrintLab: Material Futures, is on view at BWA June 18–October 26, 2026.
PrintLab at Brandywine Workshop and Archives has been supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.
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