Artists Michelle Angela Ortiz and Jesse Krimes Win Rauschenberg Fellowships
Congrats to Michelle Angela Ortiz and Jesse Krimes, two of our frequent artist collaborators, on their 2017 Artist as Activist Fellowships from the Rauschenberg Foundation! These fellowships provide up to $100,000 over two years to artists and art collectives addressing racial justice through the lens of mass incarceration. Michelle Angela Ortiz will continue the work she began with Mural Arts on Familias Separadas, expanding the project to focus on family trauma caused by detention of undocumented mothers and children. Jesse Krimes will build on the Voices project that started within our Restorative Justice program, building outward to generate grassroots support in conservative areas—the project centers around elevating the voices of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals, and collectively envisioning a path forward.
Both of these artists bring attention to issues of mass incarceration at a deeply personal level, and we’re so excited to see two Mural Arts projects gaining momentum and continuing forward. You may have seen images of the completed artwork for Familias Separadas and Voices, so we wanted to take this opportunity to showcase some of the artists’ hard work behind the scenes.
Familias Separadas was part of Open Source, our massive 2015 exhibition. Michelle Angela Ortiz created a series of portraits and phrases around the city using stencils, basing her work on interviews with immigrants living in Philadelphia who have been affected by deportation. The oral histories collected for this project remain online.
Within our Restorative Justice program, Voices aimed to provide a counterpoint to the climate of silence and stigma around incarceration. Participants shared their stories through workshops on writing, drawing, performance, and other forms of creative expression, resulting in a mural and an exhibition at Painted Bride Art Center that centered on their concerns and ideas.
Read more at The Philadelphia Inquirer >>
Open Source was presented by the Knight Foundation and the Hummingbird Foundation. Lead corporate support was provided by Bank of America, with additional support provided by the Christian R. & Mary F. Lindback Foundation, the City of Philadelphia, the Ford Foundation, The Barra Foundation, Sadie Coles HQ London, Paula Cooper Gallery New York, and Blum & Poe Los Angeles, New York, and Tokyo.
Voices was supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Ford Foundation, and the project was in partnership with The Reentry Think Tank, Home for Good Reentry Coalition, SCI Graterford, and Eastern State Penitentiary.