The Ford and Mellon Foundation announced the selected artists for the second edition of the Latinx Fellowships.
The Latinx Fellowship was established last year by the joint efforts of the Ford Foundation and Mellon Foundation. The fellowship aimed to select 15 artists each year for a period of 5 years. Each artist would receive a grant of $50,000 in order to help in their career. The batch of 15 artists is divided into three categories of 5 artists each – emerging, mid-career and established artists.
The 15 artists selected this year boast of a diverse range of names from the Latinx art community. Amalia Mesa-Bains is a Chicana fibre artist known for her altar installations. She is scheduled to have a significant exhibition at SFMOMA next month. Consuelo Jimenez Underwood, subject of an ongoing monograph, and María Magdalena Campos Pons, Cuban representative at the Venice Biennale this year, were also selected.
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Also selected was Tanya Aguiñiga, the person behind a recent BIPOC event at Frieze Los Angeles and winner of the $250,000 Heinz Award. Other names include painter Jay Lynn Gomez and the video collective Las Nietas de Nonó. The 15 artists were chosen from 200 nominations. Special care was taken to ensure that the selected group showcased diversity – from gender and sexual orientation to geographical location.
Elizabeth Alexander (President, Mellon Foundation) said: “As the Latinx Artist Fellowship enters its second year, we at Mellon are energized by the extraordinary sweep of work these fifteen artists envision and create, and the powerful perspectives and stories they bring to the visual arts.” Darren Walker (President, Ford Foundation) said: “These 15 visual artists bring an unmatched breadth of perspectives and practices to the initiative and have made an indelible impact on American art today.”
