Idea Capital has awarded nine Atlanta artists a total of $15,090 in grants to pursue works that engage with social issues, including accessibility for the disabled and aging, homelessness and the marginalization of the Latino community.
Founded in 2008, Idea Capital champions artists and risk-taking works that would likely not be funded by more traditional revenue streams. The group has awarded more than $151,000 to 135 artists in its 14 years of existence.
Past recipients include author Blake Butler, spoken word performer Tricia Hersey, filmmaker Ebony Blanding and multidisciplinary artist and actor Danielle Deadwyler.
For some of the artists, the grant will serve as seed money to launch a project. For others, it will be used to fund the final stages of a project already in progress.
The 2022 awardees are:
Nova Cypress Black - Black will create a short experimental documentary or “choreo-doc” that explores how the lived experiences of Black non-binary people in Atlanta echo the nearly erased history of gender nonconformity in pre-colonial Africa.
Jessica Blinkhorn - “REVERENCE: We 3″ is a performance series that highlights the lack of accessibility for the disabled and aging in American society. For her Idea Capital grant, Blinkhorn will develop this project engaging with her audience to begin a necessary conversation about civil rights and access in contemporary America. Blinkhorn is the winner of the Margaret Kargbo Artist as Activist Grant.
Credit: Courtesy of Idea Capital
Credit: Courtesy of Idea Capital
José Ibarra Rizo - For “Somewhere In Between,” Rizo will continue to build his ongoing portrait series focused on the Latino experience in the South. Originally a photo-based project, as part of the Idea Capital grant, Rizo will expand his project into a series of short films.
Jackson Markovic - “My Light in a Dark Place” looks at the tension between Atlanta’s rapid gentrification and the homeless residents of the Cheshire Bridge corridor. His project will challenge the idea of “cleaning up” the area by collaborating with residents of the street itself to create a photo exhibition that will be presented on Cheshire Bridge Road.
Courtney McClellan - McClellan has studied the relationship between performance and the law by focusing on the legal simulations and professional practices used to educate future attorneys at law schools across the South. With the support of Idea Capital, she will continue this expansive project.
Lee Osorio - Inspired by a 1970 Laud Humphreys book on gay sex in public restrooms, “Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places,” Osorio will create a theater piece drawn from Humphreys’ life. Osorio will examine Humphreys’ unconventional research methods in recounting the clandestine and elaborately choreographed means of seeking public sex that occurred in St. Louis’s Forest Park.
Credit: Courtesy of Idea Capital
Credit: Courtesy of Idea Capital
Serena Perrone - In “Smarrimento/Apparizione,” Perrone will use her grant to create a series of prints, large-scale photographic scrims and installations of maiolica tiles centered on her discovery of a child’s dress in the ruins of an abandoned church in the artist’s hometown in Sicily. The project interweaves history and her own imagination to tell the story of the dress and how it came to be there. Perrone is the winner of the Antinori Visual Artist Grant from Idea Capital.
Rebecca Shenfeld - In a film blending animation and documentary titled “Zero Sum,” Shenfeld will focus on Galina Risis, who was born in Moscow, immigrated to America and has flirted with QAnon and other conservative doctrines. Galina is also the artist’s mother.
Thulani Vereen - Using contemporary ballet, technology-art and mathematical concepts, Vereen’s “The Permutations of Humanity” explores what it means to be human. Drawing from training in computer science, Vereen will use physical computing as another element to bring concepts of collective behavior to the fore.
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