Del Vaz Projects is a non-profit art space based in Los Angeles, California. Founded in 2014 by Jay Ezra Nayssan in a home-turned-artists space in Santa Monica—and accredited as a 501(c)(3) in 2021—Del Vaz Projects mounts exhibitions, produces publications, and stages programs centering visual art, performance work, and moving-image media. Named after the Persian phrase دست و دلباز (dæst ō del bāz), meaning openhanded and openhearted, our approach is intentional, relational, and resourceful. We collaborate with artists across generations and geographies to manifest projects in our space and throughout our city’s cultural and historical institutions—with each endeavor, infusing diverse environments with a sense of collective intimacy, intellectual inquiry, and expressive invention. 

 

Our space serves as an incubator for artists, archives, and estates and is driven by four essential initiatives: a curatorial platform that produces on-site and off-site exhibitions that are free and accessible to the public; a research collective comprised of fellows and freelancers who pair cutting-edge scholarship with experimental authorship to craft insightful texts for Del Vaz Projects’ shows and publications; an independent press that designs, publishes, and distributes artist books and exhibition catalogs—featuring critical texts commissioned by contemporary writers and cultural innovators; and an artist production fund that secures fiscal and material resources through our extended community of collaborators in order to support underfunded artists as they pursue ambitious projects.

Del Vaz Projects embraces a specificity that does not deny inclusivity—translating those personalized values cultivated from its founding in Nayssan’s Westside apartment to ensure that artists feel the freedom and experimentation of home in any space they occupy. With each project we curate and program, we strive to redefine standards and encourage our partnering institutions to imagine beyond the parameters of their program—devising new ways to adapt their spaces and resources to the aspirations of the artist. Del Vaz Projects remains committed to ensuring that the voices we champion are reflective of a multiracial, economically diverse, international, and LGBTQIA+ inclusive society and, through their work, inspire the intersection of disparate audiences—growing at a thoughtful pace and scale that prioritizes cultural dialogues that are impactful and meaningful to our city.

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To obtain a Public Inspection Copy of our 2021, 2022, or 2023 Tax Return, please email info@delvazprojects.com with your request. 

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OUR TEAM

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Jay Ezra Nayssan, Founding Director & Chief Curator: Jay Ezra is a queer, Jewish, Iranian-American for whom place, gathering, and exchange are of personal and cultural significance. His familial experiences of exile and immigration fuel his devotion to dissident and divergent communities, with a curatorial perspective informed by his investigations into how creative practice catalyzes notions of the built and natural environment, the mutability of conceptual and physical bodies, material culture in colonial geopolitics, and queer intersectionality in modern and historical contexts. With a diverse academic background that provides him with unconventional insights into the arts, Nayssan instills Del Vaz Projects with a holistic, multidirectional, and distinctive approach—over the last decade, facilitating dialogues between vast generations of artists working across various mediums and subjects.

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Anna Bane, Editorial Director: Anna is the Editorial Director of Del Vaz Projects and an independent writer and editor based in Los Angeles—collaborating with artists, galleries, and museums on art books, curatorial texts, and critical essays. Bane is the former Assistant Editor of Ursula, a magazine published by Hauser & Wirth, where she developed pieces rooted in archival research, oral history, and long-form interviews, and where she served as the editor of recurring columns on forthcoming titles from independent art book publishers and cross-disciplinary creatives invested in ecologically sustainable practice. She is the creator and publisher of Inventory of Love, a special-edition imprint devoted to the graphic illumination of architecture, archives, and erotics in cinema.

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Donna Marcus Duke, Curatorial Research Assistant: Donna is the Curatorial Research Assistant of Del Vaz Projects and an award-winning writer, performer, and curator based in London. They currently hold a Visiting Scholarship in Life Writing at the University of Oxford. Her writing and criticism on queer and trans art culture and politics have been featured in Frieze, Numero Art, i-D, AnOther, Vogue Italia, Dazed, and 3:AM, while their essays and fiction have appeared in various independent collections published by Pilot Press, Sticky Fingers Publishing, Bittersweet Review, Worms, and UCL Press, among others. They have lectured and hosted talks at the University of Oxford, the Royal College of Art, and Goldsmiths University. As a nightlife organizer, Donna founded the performance collective Haute Mess in 2016, which showcases and promotes work by queer and trans nightlife practitioners. In 2022, they founded TISSUE with fellow writer Sam Moore—a trans* literary initiative that will hold a residency at Goldsmiths Centre of Contemporary Art until mid-2025. They are currently developing their debut novel, ‘Cult Trans’, which explores the role of faith and spirituality in contemporary trans discourse.

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Ming Lin, Copy Editor: Ming is the Copy Editor of Del Vaz Projects and a writer, editor, researcher, and archivist born and raised in New York City. She has published reviews, essays, and poems in The New Inquiry, Frieze, ArtReview Asia, New York Magazine, Spike, and other print and online periodicals. With Alex Tatarsky, she stewards Shanzhai Lyric, a roving body of poetic research that includes over 450 poetry-garments that has recently taken up residence in several disused spaces along Canal Street.

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Channing Moore, Administrative Assistant

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Sabine Paris, Artist & Estate Liaison

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Ben Schwartz, Director of Publications: Ben is the Director of Publications of Del Vaz Projects and a graphic designer, researcher, and writer from Ohio. After working in the music industry, Schwartz attended design school at ArtCenter College of Design in Los Angeles. In 2018, he was awarded the Walker Art Center design fellowship. In 2020, Schwartz participated in the Jan van Eyck Residency. His most recent publication is UNLICENSED: Bootlegging as a Creative Practice. Currently, he works as the Managing Editor for Source Type.​​