Past
Grantees

Named by The Guardian as a musician “who will enrich your life,” Shruthi Rajasekar is an Indian-American composer and vocalist with a unique dual background in Carnatic (South Indian classical) and Western classical music. Shruthi has won numerous honors, including the Global Women in Music Award from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Her compositions are performed worldwide; in 2021, her work premiered at the United Nations COP26. She is a Carnatic vocal disciple of her mother, musician Nirmala Rajasekar, and has studied as a Western classical soprano with Jerry Elsbernd, Rochelle Ellis, and Patricia Rozario, OBE.

Shruthi has been in residence at the Anderson Center, Tusen Takk Foundation, and Britten Pears Arts. An alumnus of Princeton University and a former Marshall Scholar, Shruthi pursued graduate study in the United Kingdom in ethnomusicology and composition. She serves on the board of new music chamber ensemble Zeitgeist.

FELLOWSHIP STATEMENT

Through music, I explore identity, community, and joy. In my work, my two idioms of Carnatic and Western classical intersect and converse to show how different influences coexist in all of us. Each of us is a mosaic of our experiences. When recognized, our varied backgrounds allow us to understand each other, no matter how different our individual stories are. This is what drives me to create: to build spaces for reflection and exchange.

Community is central to every aspect of my composing, from the cultural and diasporic experiences that inspire me to the different groups of listeners and performers that I bring together in the music that I create. I love writing for the voice because singing is simultaneously personal and communal. To sing together requires us to breathe together, to sense one another, and to listen to our neighbors — making us more present, grounded, and giving.

Kendra J. Bostock is a Detroit native working as a dancer, choreographer, teaching artist, facilitator and community organizer in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. As a dancer, Kendra has worked with Urban Bush Women, Ase Dance Theater Collective, MBDance, Moving Spirits Dance Company, Movement of the People Dance Company and as a guest artist with Oyu Oro. Kendra’s choreographic work has been presented at Florida A&M University, the off Broadway show 7 Sins, Museu de Arte in Salvador, Brazil, Dixon Place, Ailey Citigroup Theater, and Actors Fund Theater. She has been an Artist in Residence at Brooklyn Studios for Dance, The Neighborhood Project Through 651Arts, and The Laundromat Project. Kendra serves as the Founder/Director of STooPS, an outdoors-based community building event that uses art strengthen ties between different entities in Bed-Stuy. She is also a teaching artist at Cumbe: Center for African and Diaspora Dance.

FELLOWSHIP STATEMENT

As an avid student of folkloric traditions of the African Diaspora, my work is grounded in the Ghanian concept of Sankofa—looking back in order to move forward. I am working to develop a Sankofic praxis to collect embodied research that employs Black History as a springboard for imagining all aspects of community—art, culture, movements, people, lifestyles etc. This process will help me to not only navigate my contemporary life as a Black woman but also invite others to learn from the enriching lessons of these forms. Through intentional partnerships with collaborators, community members, especially elders, local organizations and businesses, I will work to collect, share, and interpret their stories. I will continue creating a collaborative archiving of history and culture with the development of my project, the Sankofa Residency. Through my artistic expression, I want to help shape the future of my community by interpreting and reimagining the narratives. My work is to dance Afrofuturism in action.

Sarah Rothberg creates playful, poetic, usually-a-bit-weird experiences that invite you to reconsider your relationship to the world around you. These take many forms ranging from VR/AR to installation, performance, video, writing, workshops.

These experiences exist in a variety of contexts: at galleries, museums, festivals, on google docs, at the consumer electronics expo, screens in the NYC Subway system, Apple stores around the world, zoom calls, secret twitter accounts, or the MoMa (unsanctioned). Some hosts have included: bitforms gallery, Rhizome, NRW-forum, MTA Arts, Sotheby's S2, CultureHub, Gray Area Foundation. Rothberg is on the faculty at NYU (interactive media at ITP), a member of ONX Studio, and a mentor/former-member at NEW INC.

Rothberg is part of collaboratives: MORE&MORE UNLIMITED, which facilitates workshops for imagining changed worlds, and IS THIS THING ON? a post-web2 experiment in artist-driven livestreaming.

FELLOWSHIP STATEMENT

Usually, I make things to connect to someone: you! or myself.

I am currently working on spaces (mostly virtual) for performance and conversation, and am specifically interested in how technologies facilitate different kinds of interactions between people, as well as different ways of thinking and imagining.

In general, I pursue projects that allow me to engage with emerging technologies (broadly speaking), and question how they impact the world with a mix of experimentation, silliness, critical inquiry, sensitivity and joy!

Efraín Rozas is a Peruvian interdisciplinary artist, researcher and robotics maker. His work was described as “An incredible physical presence that transformed the stage into a soundscape” by the New York Times, “A heady confluence of technology, culture and cognition” by The New Yorker, and “A deep psychonautic dive” by Wire Magazine. He was a resident at The Kitchen in 2021. He is a recipient of the NY State Council on the Arts/ Wavefarm Media Arts Assistance Fund, Jerome Foundation/Harvestworks New Works Commission, and Knockdown Center (NYC) residency for time-based art.

He has performed at Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, Brooklyn Museum, Queens Museum, Levitation Festival, Museum of Contemporary art of Lima and Central Park Summerstage Fania Records 50th anniversary. His album Roza Cruz with his Latin American experimental project La Mecánica Popular was named one of the best Latin American albums of the decade by Zona Sucia and Estereofonía. Featured at CNN, BBC, Washington Post, Daily News, and NPR. He holds a PhD from NYU and published the book Fusión: A Soundtrack for Peru.

FELLOWSHIP STATEMENT

I am interested in synesthesia, the cross-pollination of the senses, and polyrhythm. I want to generate pieces across time/space contexts that use polyrhythm and synesthesia as tools to generate a state of contemplation. For this I will develop a series of pieces that combine robotics, video, music, performance art and sculpture.

Rafael Samanez is a Peruvian filmmaker who grew up in Cleveland, Ohio and currently resides in New York City. Samanez was the Founder and Executive Director of a Bronx-based grassroots organization, VAMOS Unidos, advocating for immigrant and worker’s rights. His work as a community organizer inspires his films, which center intersectionalities of gender, sexuality, race, migration, and class. He received a 2018 Princess Grace Award/Honoraria in film, was a John Grist Documentary/BAFTA New York Scholar, and graduated with an MFA from the City College of New York in 2019. His short film, Out of the Shadows, won Best Documentary Film Award at the 2019 Cityvisions and appeared in multiple film festivals including New York Latino Film Festival, Urbanworld and San Francisco Transgender Film Festival. Rafael is currently working on two feature length documentaries, is a film consultant, and teaches media production courses at the City College of New York.

FELLOWSHIP STATEMENT

I aspire to produce impactful films that reframe narratives traditionally defined by status quos. My art builds strong connections with universal experiences where viewers can traverse through nuanced journeys elevating conversation and thought. I want my films to appeal to and validate directly-impacted audiences while challenging conventional norms. During this fellowship I plan to finish two feature length documentaries. The first, My Existence is Resistance, covers the life and work of three influential trans women of color breaking down barriers in New York City during the height of the global pandemic. The second, Defend the Sacred, focuses upon Indigenous resistance within the militarized environment of the Mexico/U.S. border.

Kavita Shah is an award-winning vocalist, composer, educator, researcher, polyglot and lifelong New Yorker hailed by NPR for possessing an “amazing dexterity for musical languages.” Her projects blending modern jazz, new music, and world traditions include Visions (2014), Folk Songs of Naboréa (2017), Interplay (2018, nominated for France's Victoires de la Musique for Jazz Album of the Year), and Cape Verdean Blues (forthcoming, 2023). She is currently working on a new album of original music for her jazz quintet. Kavita performs her music at major concert halls, festivals, and clubs on six continents, and her work has been supported by New Music America, Chamber Music America, Jerome Foundation, Camargo Foundation, and Park Avenue Armory. She has worked with Sheila Jordan, Martial Solal, Miguel Zenón, Lionel Loueke, Billy Childs, Miho Hazama, among others. Kavita holds a B.A. in Latin American Studies from Harvard, an M.M. in Jazz Voice from Manhattan School of Music, and speaks nine languages.

FELLOWSHIP STATEMENT

I am a composer-vocalist who integrates performance practice, improvisation, and ethnomusicological field research to create original works that unearth and expose the virtuosity of the human voice. Made in deep engagement with the jazz tradition while also advancing its global sensibilities, my music is about and for people like me—communities in exile, refugees, stateless people, cultural nomads, and those who straddle hybrid identities. By creating works that are multifaceted, complex, cosmopolitan, and inclusionary of those at the margin, I strive to shed light on underrepresented cultures and musical traditions and to provoke my audience to question hierarchical notions of social identity. Current projects include All Roads Lead to Home, original music for jazz quintet inspired by a pilgrimage to my ancestral villages in coastal Gujarat, Little Drifters of a Split Earth, an immersive opera for youth voices about global child migration, and Who Will See My Garden Grow?, a collection of personal songs around the subject of motherhood. I am grateful to the Jerome Foundation for this recognition and continued support of my work.

Thailand-born, NYC-based composer Tidtaya Sinutoke (ฑิตยา สินุธก) and Filipina-American librettist Isabella Dawis are the co-recipients of the Fred Ebb Award for musical theatre songwriting and the Weston-Ghostlight New Musical Award. Their other awards include the Jonathan Larson Grant, the Billie Burke Ziegfield Award, the Playwrights Realm International Theatremakers Award, and the Kleban Prize for Librettists. Their musicals and operas include HALF THE SKY (The 5th Avenue Theatre’s First Draft Commission and Radio Play, Rhinebeck Writers Retreat, Theater Mu, Theater Latté Da, the O’Neill Center), SUNWATCHER (Weston Theater Company, Ancram Opera House, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, The Civilians, Goodspeed Musicals, Tofte Lake Center), and LITTLE DUGONG AND HER SEAGRASS SONG (American Opera Project).

Isabella and Tidtaya’s work has been supported by the American Theatre Wing, Musical Theatre Factory, the Kurt Weill Foundation, the Coalition of Asian American Leaders, and many more. More at tidtayasinutoke.com and isabelladawis.com.

FELLOWSHIP STATEMENT

As a team of two Asian female writers, we create new music-theatrical narratives with bold, unconventional Asian women at the center. We blend musical idioms and storytelling traditions from around the globe, bringing together performers, creatives, and audiences from underrepresented communities. By uplifting Asian, female, and immigrant voices, we work to reinvent the American musical theater and opera landscape.

We look forward to spending our fellowship developing the following pieces, in collaboration with the Twin Cities and NYC theatermaking communities. HALF THE SKY tells the story of an Asian American woman climbing Mount Everest – a contemporary American musical on a global scale, infused with Thai and Himalayan folk music. Our chamber musical SUNWATCHER brings to light the story of Japanese female astronomer and “hidden figure” Hisako Koyama – by mixing elements of Noh theater, electronic live looping, and taiko drumming. LITTLE DUGONG AND HER SEAGRASS SONG is an opera for kids about sea creatures – using Southern Thai folk music and shadow puppetry to educate about climate change.

Sound Sovereign/Brown is a composer, vocalist, and former healing practitioner, whose work is rooted in sacred refuge, embodied decolonization, and restorative liberatory practice.

Sound’s music includes chant-based chamber pieces, orchestrated song landscapes, and trio-based groove adagios, with vocal components ranging from pre-lingual/speechless callings, to mantra, lyrical language, and prayer.

As a vocalist and arranger, Sound is a member of Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber (led by the renowned Greg Tate, who transitioned December 2021), and the vocal director for Treya Lam.

Interdisciplinary projects beloved to Sound include working with Mendi and Keith Obadike, Stefanie Batten Bland, Elliott Sharp, Anaïs Maviel, Tonya Pinkins, and Derek McPhatter.

As a composer, Sound’s first full length solo project, Data and the Disciple, vol. 1, has been commissioned by the American Composers Forum, and the New York Foundation for the Arts, intended to release and live premiere in 2024.

FELLOWSHIP STATEMENT

My work is grounded in ritual, rest, and ancestral-artistic pathways, as means for accessing our lost medicines, unraveling and dissolving trauma, and remembering our inherent, indigenous, decolonized knowing. 

Engaging spaciousness, pulse, harmonic intimacy, embodied listening, evolving repetition, and a continuum of language states, creates a gateway for me: Invoking pre-identity universal information, intergenerational and collective memory, and the deeply personal, individualized experience, which is communally witnessed (and/or shared), held and transformed. 

This receptive-intuitive-somatic compositional process has also served as a visceral guiding system for my own healing, as someone navigating chronic physiological trauma/stress conditions.

I land and root as I discover that which profoundly releases restricted, suppressed, and obstructed breath… That which recalibrates my own heartbeat… And that which allows me, in my black body, the reclaiming of my own voice, in a world that simultaneously seeks to both silence and exploit it.

Debra J. Stone is a writer of essays, poetry, and fiction. Her work has been published in Jarnal Literary Journal, Brooklyn Review, Under the Gum Tree, Random Sample Review, Green Mountains Review (GMR), About Place Journal, Saint Paul Almanac, and forthcoming in other literary journals. She has received residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, Callaloo, The Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, New York Mills Arts Residency and is a Kimbilio Fellow. Sundress Publishers nominated her essay, “Grandma Essie’s Vanilla Poundcake,” Best of the Net, judged by Hanif Abdurraquib in 2019 and in 2021 her short fiction, “year-of- staying–in place,” was Best of Net and Pushcart nominated. Debra is chair of the board directors at Graywolf Press in Minneapolis and board member of the Northwoods Writing Conference in Bemidji, Minnesota. She resides in Minneapolis. https://www.debrajeannestone.com

FELLOWSHIP STATEMENT

I will research the migration of my family and travel to the Black towns of Missouri, Oklahoma and the town my ancestors founded when they were Exodusters and ranchers during the Nebraska territory. Currently, I am working on The House on Rondo, a novel-in-progress. As this is a new project, I am developing new skills through workshops, mentors and other tools to complete a finished draft. I am interested in my work joining in the dialogue regarding reparations for the descendants of the destroyed Rondo neighborhood and the ancestors whose generational wealth was stolen from them.

The multimedia works of Maggie Thompson (Ojibwe) expand various textile traditions’ inherited ways of being and becoming. Thompson skillfully and intuitively works with both natural and synthetic materials to address personal and universal experiences of loss, grief, and love.

Selected for the 2023 Renwick Invitational at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Thompson has recently had solo exhibitions that include Just Friends at Bockley Gallery (2022) and Dakobijige / She Ties Things Together at the Watermark Center in Bemidji, Minnesota (2021). She has been awarded grants from the Jerome Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board, and the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, and her work is collected by the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Minnesota Museum of American Art, and the Minnesota Historical Society, among other public institutions.

Thompson holds a BFA in Textiles from the Rhode Island School of Design (2013) and is based in Minneapolis, MN.

FELLOWSHIP STATEMENT

I want to begin researching my Mom's side of the family more in depth in order to create new photographic, textile-based work using weaving and industrial knitting techniques. As I have created so much work based on the loss of my Dad, I want to create new work based on the joy of my Mother. Having the ability to reflect on the relationship of mother and daughter will also be important on a personal level, as she is growing older.

I have begun this body of work through a single commissioned piece for the Hood Museum of Art. The work is a self portrait photograph that is cut down in to strips that are being woven through with blue 1/8" pieces of ribbon. The overall pattern created with the ribbon is based on my mom’s blue and white dishes with an Ojibwe floral flare.

I want to continue exploring this new technique of weaving photography and ribbon, along with refining my programming skills on the industrial Stoll knitting machine to continue to challenge preconceived ideas of what Native art should and can be.

Merit Thursday (he/him) is a white, queer, and transsexual experimental animator, educator, and curator. He teaches in the animation department at MCAD, and has experience in youth arts programming in the Twin Cities. As a curator, he has hosted and programmed local screening series such as Cinema Lounge, queer series Video Variant, and the currently running Weird Stuff Only. As an independent filmmaker, Thursday is partial to screening his works on the local and DIY level, but has also screened works globally.

FELLOWSHIP STATEMENT

As an independent animator, I have been noticing the ways that I feel pulled both towards the pre-cinema animation practices, as well as the new media and algorithmic techniques developing today. I feel excited to use this time as a fellow to extend my practice in both directions. Firstly, I have been exploring and excited by the ways that my analog or traditional practices can be manipulated in surprising ways using algorithmic functions of video editing software. I am reaching a point where the pre-built algorithmic processors are getting better at their intended functions, which doesn't feel exciting to me. I will be using this time to learn how to build my own processors, so that I can better rely on the chance, circumstance, and surprise of a somewhat broken machine. Additionally, I am always fascinated by pre-cinema techniques, such as crankies, puppetry, shadow theater, and optical toys. I will also be spending this time researching these practices and integrating them into my digital realm. I am so humbled and excited by the opportunity and spaciousness to expand my technical reach and be able to answer questions in new ways.

Joseph “MN JOE” Tran is a founding member of BRKFST Dance Company and also a member of the world-renowned breaking crew Knuckleheads Cali, respected for their uniquely intricate and non-traditional methods of movement. Tran is the recipient of the 2019 McKnight Dancer Fellowship and is known for his signature moves which have earned him multiple first-place victories in breaking competitions across the US, Europe, and South America. Tran has choreographed multiple original works which have premiered at various venues such as The Cowles Center, Southern Theater, and Orchestra Hall with the Minnesota Orchestra. He has toured internationally to Ireland for Dance 2 Connect Festival and nationally to Hartford, CT with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. Tran has set repertoire with BRKFST at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Carleton College, and Bates Dance Festival. From 2007-2019, he was a dancer and choreographer for the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves “First Avenue Breakers.” Tran currently works as a breaking instructor for Saint Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists and Young Dance.

FELLOWSHIP STATEMENT

The 2023 Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship supports my mission as a dancer who pushes boundaries, provides alternative perspectives to conventional ideas, and inspires others to innovate. I will create and present original performances with BRKFST Dance Company and to continue my journey as a breaker at the highest levels of competition. I look forward to the various connections and opportunities it will provide!

Brooks Turner is an artist, writer, and educator based in Minneapolis. Through diverse methodologies that include archival research, collage, digital drawing, film, and installation, Turner engages the history of fascism in Minnesota as a synecdoche for understanding and challenging the aesthetics of US History. Recent solo exhibitions include Legends and Myths of Ancient Minnesota at the Weisman Art Museum, Uncanny Familiarities of Scenes and People at St. Cloud State University, and Order and Discipline at Ridgewater College. His work has been supported by the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Minnesota Humanities Center, Rimon: The Minnesota Jewish Federation, the Minnesota State Inter-Faculty Organization, and the Jerome Foundation. Turner received a BA from Amherst College and MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles. He is currently Chair of Visual Art at St. Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists and a lecturer at both St. Cloud State University and the University of Minnesota.

FELLOWSHIP STATEMENT

I use digital processes to recontextualize text and images extracted from physical archives as a means of identifying American Fascism and exposing its aesthetic continuity from past to present. Recently, I have shifted to consider the aesthetics of anti-fascist resistance by examining a moment in 1938 when Minnesota union organizers traveled to Mexico to study with Leon Trotsky, then living with Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. At Trotsky’s advice, the organizers created the militant Union Defense Guard, which was successfully deployed to intimidate a mob of fascists and their leader. I am fascinated by this confluence of revolutionaries. How would their conversation flow between politics, place, art, and labor? Can we trace an aesthetic language through these individuals? What can we learn of anti-fascist resistance (and fascism’s response) from this meeting? I am currently materializing my digital and archival processes as a series of woven tapestries and an experimental documentary.

Anh Vo is a Vietnamese dancer, writer, and activist. They create dances and produce texts about pornography and queer relations, about being and form, about identity and abstraction, about history and its colonial reality. They earned their degrees in Performance Studies from Brown University (BA) and New York University (MA). Currently based in Brooklyn, Anh is also developing a sustainable relationship to Hanoi, Vietnam.

FELLOWSHIP STATEMENT

I create dances and produce texts about pornography and queer relations, about being and form, about identity and abstraction, about history and its colonial reality. I make art about the life of a Vietnamese desiring America, of a colonized being desiring its colonizer.

With this fellowship, I will deepen my “Weak Body” practice. This practice is loosely inspired by the Vietnamese phrase “yếu bóng vía” (clunkily translated as “weak aura”), which refers to people who are sensitive to spectral presence and susceptible to haunting. In thinking about this vulnerable altered state, “Weak Body” experiments with a repertoire of small, repetitive, rhythmic, vibrational, and durational movements that can softly loosen the connection to reality and heighten sensitivity to other entangled worlds in order to dance with ghostly beings emerging in the wake of wars. “Weak Body” is not just a mode of aesthetic exploration, but also a daily practice of survival that finds value in weakness, vulnerability, and interdependence.

Charisse Pearlina Weston (born 1988, Houston, TX) is a conceptual artist and writer based in Brooklyn, NY. She received her M.F.A. in Studio Art from the University of California-Irvine and is an alumna of the Whitney Museum of Art’s Independent Study Program. She has recently participated in group and solo exhibitions at the Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College of Art, Smack Mellon, and the Queens Museum. She is the recipient of awards and fellowships from Artadia, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Dedalus Foundation, the Harpo Foundation, the Graham Foundation, and Bard Graduate Center. In 2021, she received the Museum of Art and Design’s Burke Prize. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Artsy, Art Review, and Art in America. Currently, Weston is artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem.

FELLOWSHIP STATEMENT

I understand the expansion of my current work to include an exploration of the importance of glass in carceral architecture, as well as the ways in which inmates use glass and mirrors to subvert the panoptic lens of these disciplinary spaces which rely heavily on glass, one-way film, windowless spaces, and regimented access to both natural and artificial light to exert power and dominance. I am interested in how juridical policies and procedures reinforce these protocols. Furthermore, I would like to explore the possibilities of pushing the scale of my work to explore these ideas to consider the complex problematics of contemporary installation and sculpture.

Kiyan Williams is a visual artist based in New York City. Working fluidly across sculpture, performance, public art, video, and installation, they create art works that redefine fixed notions of history and the body. They are attracted to quotidian, unconventional materials and methods that evoke the historical, political, and ecological forces that shape individual and collective identities. Williams earned a BA with honors from Stanford University and an MFA in Visual Art from Columbia University. Their work has been exhibited at The Hirshhorn, the Hammer Museum, SculptureCenter, Brooklyn Museum, Socrates Sculpture Park, The Shed, and more. Williams’ exhibitions have been reviewed in Artforum, Art in America, ArtNews, BOMB Magazine, and Hyperallergic. They were recently featured in Cultured Magazines’ “2023 Young Artist List.”

FELLOWSHIP STATEMENT

My work unearths obscured histories deeply embedded in the landscape. My forthcoming projects reimagine nationalist symbols and neoclassical architecture to investigate power, sovereignty, and the ideals at the core of the American project.

Jenny Xie is a New York City-based writer and educator. She is the author of two poetry collections, Eye Level (Graywolf Press, 2018) and The Rupture Tense (Graywolf Press, 2022), and the chapbook Nowhere to Arrive (Northwestern University Press, 2017). Her work has been supported through fellowships and grants from Kundiman, New York Foundation of the Arts, Civitella Ranieri Foundation, and the Vilcek Foundation. She is an Assistant Professor of Written Arts at Bard College.

FELLOWSHIP STATEMENT

My work charts cross-cultural connections and dislocations, while tracing the enmeshed nature of seeing and of being seen. I’m invested in the concept of opacity: the right to be unknowable—and unmarketable—and the implications of being a site of continually shifting contradictions and unstatic experience.

Recently, my poems have been driven by slippages and scramblings in tenses—when the past ruptures into the present, or when the future leaks into the past—and by forms of historical, collective, and personal memory and postmemory that warp, stain, disfigure, and erode.

I strive to create work that demonstrates the vital force unassimilated language can have, of the power and charge that can pulse through words when they behave differently, against rules and convention, and against forces that collude to render language more utilitarian, more homogenous, and free of nuance and rich complexity.

Shen Xin practices empowering alternative histories, relations, and potentials between individuals and nation-states. Their interests lie in understanding culture on its own terms. Seeing it as an active commitment to the learning, teaching and engaging with relating to places as land, their work opens up to inhabiting the multitudes of the selves through the lens of time. Engaged with moving image, video installation, public event and collective process, Shen Xin imagines and creates affirmative spaces of belonging that embrace polyphonic narratives and identities.

Xin’s solo presentations include ས་གཞི་སྔོན་པོ་འགྱུར། (The Earth Turned Green) (Swiss Institute, New York, 2022), Brine Lake (A New Body) (Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 2021), Double Feature (Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 2019), Synthetic Types (Stedelijk Museum, 2019), To Satiate (MadeIn Gallery, Shanghai, 2019), Warm Spell (ICA, London, 2018), and half-sung, half-spoken (Serpentine Galleries, London, 2017). Their group exhibitions include Language is a River (MUMA, Melbourne, 2021), Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning (Gwangju Biennale, 2021), Sigg Prize (M+ Museum, Hong Kong, 2019), Afterimage (Lisson Gallery, London, 2019), and Songs for Sabotage (New Museum Triennial, New York, 2018). They received the BALTIC Artists’ Award (2017) and held the Rijksakademie residency in Amsterdam (2018-19).

FELLOWSHIP STATEMENT

I seek to create works that inherit and speak to values concerning culture and ecology. I’d like to develop a body of works that are connected to the role of being a student towards restorative relationship with the land. In these upcoming years, I’d like to learn how to better listen to the unknown and known spaces of one’s multitude, and to become familiar with ways of being accountable to language, image, sound and space. I’d like to affirm both through context of what is spoken and how it is spoken, that the human speech is but a part of what the earth speaks. Through learning and embodying the sensorial affinity within and between languages, I imagine encounters with ways back to the coherence of relations, between human language and ecology. Having worked with translations of many different languages, it is of interest to me to understand the inter-lingual world, where translations between one and others activate the resources of various languages with respect to one another. I’d like to hold languages as soil, and as soil, languages inscribe us into various depths in relation to their expressive vitality through time, to facilitate the relinquishment of language’s human exclusivity.

Alex Bijan Zandi is an Iranian-American filmmaker and artist based in Brooklyn. His work explores the social difficulties and enchantments of the Middle Eastern diaspora. Zandi studied creative writing at the Washington University in St. Louis where he received the Howard Nemerov Prize for Poetry. He went on to receive an MFA in Film/Video at Bard College. Zandi was a 2022 Reykjavík Film Festival Talent Lab fellow and in 2021 participated in the MACRO x The Black List Feature Screenwriter Incubator. His films have been screened internationally at venues such as the Amsterdam International Film Festival (Best Experimental Film Award), Abrons Art Center, Knockdown Center, Petzel Gallery, and 15 Orient Gallery. Zandi is currently developing his first narrative feature film, Saffron Threads with Rathaus Films.

FELLOWSHIP STATEMENT

My work seeks naturalism with fantasy, observation with emotive empathy, narrative logic with poetic enigma. I believe that aesthetic experience is more profound when thinking and feeling is activated both internally and at a critical distance. This mantra reflects my subjectivity as an Iranian-American: the double-consciousness of being a unique individual with desires and flaws, while simultaneously being an “other” projected by a post 9/11 society.

During my fellowship, I will work toward making Saffron Threads. Through the eyes of an Iranian-American teenager, the film chronicles societal crossfire after 9/11 and the rise of the alt-right in suburban Boston. I will also develop a new project that explores the intergenerational trauma stemming from the multiple Iranian Revolutions and the possibility of cultural redemption.

Selwa Abd is a multi-disciplinary artist, musician & designer living in NYC (originally from Morocco). Under the guise of Bergsonist, she uses a variety of media to investigate social resonance through divergent conceptual aesthetics (minimalism and musique concrète to name a few). Selwa’s extended creative practice uses intuition & fragment-based systems as legitimate and only modi operandi. Through her work, she explores notions of identity, memory, and social politics. She is the founder of the community resource Pick Up The Flow and host of a monthly music show on NTS Radio. In 2020, her first full length album / sonic autobiography: Middle Ouest was released via Optimo Music. She also scored the award winning Moroccan film Jmar by Samy Sidali which is now competing at the 2023 Cesar Awards.

She is a recipient of the SACEM grant (2020), Harvestworks Technology Immersion Program Grant & Fellowship (2022) and the Issue Project Room Residency (2022).

Selwa Abd has shown works at 47 Canal, Fridman Gallery, Boston Museum Of Fine Arts, Center For Performance Research, Issue Project Room, Pioneer Works, Moogfest, The Brooklyn Film Festival, Meow Wolf & France Televisions to name a few.