Art Matters announces 2011 grantees
Art Matters, the non-profit foundation, is pleased to announce 23 grants ranging in amounts of 3,000 USD to 10,000 USD to artists focusing on communication and collaboration across national borders:Mary Walling Blackburn
Support for a video project retracing, in reverse, the route taken by American hashish smugglers from Nova Scotia to Syria in 1974.
Andrea Bowers
Support for a video project documenting DREAM-activist youth in California fighting the deportation of undocumented students.
Juan Willam Chávez
Support for research in Spain, England and France towards a photo/video project exploring the partnership between humans and bees.
Laura Chipley
Support for travel to Ecuador to video document the ongoing effects of oil contamination perpetrated by Texaco in the Amazon from 1964–1990.
Sonya Clark
Support for research in Jamaica, Ghana and the UK towards a project exploring the history of sugarcane and Afro-Caribbean hairstyles named for the Triangle Trade cash crop.
Tony Cruz
Support for research in Panama and Spain on religious festivities centered around two mystical figures, as part of a project involving musicians Ismael “Maelo” Rivera and Pau Casals.
Hasan Elahi
Support for travel to Transdneistra, the self-declared republic between Moldova and the Ukraine, to document daily activities in its major cities using software the artist has developed.
Lola Flash
Support for travel to England, Brazil and South Africa to continue three different photographic portrait series involving the politics of pigmentocracy, gender and age.
William Gaynor
Support for travel to India and Nepal for research in Mumbai, Agra, Varanasi, and the Barun Valley.
Robert Gero
Support for travel to Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia for research and interviews with the Roma.
Hope Ginsburg
Support for travel to the reef atolls off the coast of Belize to study the sea-sponges that grow there as part of the artist’s ongoing social artwork project Sponge.
David Kagan
Support for travel to Ghana to explore the intersection of contemporary and traditional music making, towards a new music/ video project Obruni Papa.
Helen Lessick
Support for travel to Kenya to research the interaction of soil, culture and time, in collaboration with Nairobi-based video artist David Koch, the UN Programme for the Environment, and the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture.
Cynthia Madansky
Support for the experimental film 1+8, about Turkey and its relationship with the eight countries it borders, in collaboration with Istanbul-based artist Angelika Brudniak.
Wardell Milan
Support for travel to photograph the remaining architecture from Nazi-occupied Berlin and Mussolini-era Fascist Rome towards Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, a film adaptation of Eugene Ionesco’s play Rhinoceros.
Lorraine O’Grady
Support for travel to Jamaica to meet local family members, artists and art workers, documenting the trip in photos, video and text.
Yoshua Okón
Support for a project restaging key battles from the Guatemalan war in late 80s and 90s in the parking lot of Cypress Park Home Depot with members of the Mayan community in LA who fought in the actual war and are now day laborers.
Sheila Pepe
Support for the international iterations of Common Sense, an ongoing installation and participatory performance involving a large-scale crocheted drawing.
Sreshta Rit Premnath
Support for travel to Bangalore, India for photo/video documentation of utopian imagery of development, the architecture of MS Ramaiah, and migrant laborers.
Jessica Segall
Support for travel to Mongolia to collaborate with local artist Tuguldur Yondonjamts on a performative sculpture project involving natural electric fields.
Susan Silton
Support for travel to La Gomera in the Canary Islands to work with women practitioners of the whistling language Silbo Gomero.
Sonali Sridhar
Support for travel to India for a project involving the harnessing of solar power from panels embedded and embroidered in women’s veils.
Wu Tsang and Alexandro Segade
Support for travel to Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico to interview queer people using questions inspired by Pasolini’s 1965 documentary on public attitudes towards sex.
For more information on Art Matters, please visit www.artmattersfoundation.org.
