Art Matters is pleased to announce the recipients of its 2016 grants to individual artists. The foundation awarded 26 grants of 5,000 and 10,000 USD for projects and ongoing work that breaks ground aesthetically and socially.

In addition to grants to individuals, Art Matters made a special grant to Lower Manhattan Cultural Council for Michael Richards: Winged, an exhibition of work by Richards, a 1995 grantee, who died tragically in his LMCC studio in the World Trade Center on 9/11.

In announcing the grants, Art Matters Director Sacha Yanow said, “We are thrilled to support this extraordinary group of artists from across the U.S. Their practices are diverse, engaging issues of social justice and experimenting with form. We feel their voices are particularly important at this moment in the world, and through our funding we hope to help amplify them.”

Sandra Haydee Alonso (El Paso, TX)
Wearable sculptural works that question borders, identity, and relationships.

Katrina Andry (New Orleans, LA)
Ongoing printmaking work involving vignettes that challenge racial stereotyping.

Sadie Barnette (Oakland, CA)
Work based on the FBI files and COINTELPRO’s surveillance of the artist’s father and his activities with the Black Panthers.

Black Salt Collective 
(Oakland/Los Angeles, CA)
Ongoing performance and archiving work of this Black, Brown and Indigenous women artist collective.

Frank Chi (Washington DC)
New short film that remixes imagery from the women’s suffrage movement.

Complex Movements (Detroit, MI)
Ongoing multi-media performance and installation work engaging community-led social justice movements in Detroit and beyond.

Michelle Dizon (Los Angeles, CA)
The Archive’s Fold, an artist’s book that explores the politics of archives.

Skylar Fein (New Orleans, LA)
Ongoing work with Parisite, a community-based New Orleans skate park, and the youth who built it.

FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture (Baltimore, MD)
Nuestra Tierra, Mi Cuerpo, a Monument Quilt display at the US/Mexico border in collaboration with La Casa Mandarina and Latinx survivors of rape and abuse.

Vanessa German (Pittsburgh, PA)
Museum of Resilience, a neighborhood art place centered around the global interconnectedness and power of human beings.

Harriet’s Apothecary (Brooklyn NY)
Ongoing work of this healing justice collective led by Black cis women, queer and trans healers, health professionals, artists and ancestors.

Taro Hattori (Richmond, CA)
Rolling Counterpoint, a mobile teahouse providing a platform for discussions around inequities within local communities.

Xandra Ibarra (Oakland, CA)
New performance about corporeal inhabitation, racialized skin and concealment in the age of surveillance.

Jellyfish Colectivo y Los Dos 
(El Paso, TX)
Collaborative traveling street art initiative along the US/Mexico border.

Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. (Detroit, MI)
Ongoing poster printing for concerts at Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the USA.

Young Joon Kwak (Los Angeles, CA)
New body of work involving trans performance objects.

Troy Michie (Brooklyn, NY)
Travel to El Paso towards the development of multi-disciplinary works inspired by the Zoot suit.

Holly Nordlum (Anchorage, AK)
Tupik Mi, a film and community based project dedicated to the revitalization of traditional tattooing amongst Inuit women.

Ahamefule Oluo (Seattle, WA)
Development of SUSAN, a theatrical performance about the artist’s mother.

Laura Ortman (Brooklyn, NY)
Ongoing work involving the recording and collection of sounds, songs, stories and voices of Native Americans in New York City.

Otabenga Jones and Associates (Houston, TX)
Creation of an education and activity packet for the youth of Houston’s historic Third Ward neighborhood.

Sondra Perry (Perth Amboy, NJ)
Video work involving the NCAA’s use of the artist’s twin brother’s likeness.

Dario Robleto (Houston, TX)
A body of work centered around the history of the heartbeat.

Tina Takemoto (San Francisco, CA)
The third in a trilogy of experimental films about queer Japanese life during American wartime imprisonment.

Rodrigo Valenzuela 
(Los Angeles, CA/Seattle, WA)
Video work about unpaid labor, volunteering, and internship culture.

Judith Walgren (San Francisco, CA)
Photographic and video work towards an alternate curriculum challenging existing K-5th grade California Mission studies.