Robert Rauschenberg Foundation
381 Lafayette Street
New York, NY 10003-7022
T +1 212 228 5283
www.rauschenbergfoundation.org
Four independent artists and two artist collectives receive game-changing support to pursue creative projects addressing timely social challenges.
The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation has selected its inaugural cohort of Artist as Activist fellows. The artists are pursuing ambitious creative projects that address a spectrum of timely issues, including climate change, mass incarceration, and caste-based sexual violence. Fellows receive unrestricted grants ranging from 30,000 to 100,000 USD over two years along with opportunities for professional development.
The foundation created the Artist as Activist Fellowship to provide game-changing resources to artists, designers, and other creative professionals devising artistic strategies that go beyond awareness-building to spur action. The foundation is also launching a multi-pronged research initiative to better understand the needs and experiences of artists working this way, beginning with a practitioner census in May 2015.To learn more, please click here.
The 2015 Artist as Activist fellows are listed below. To learn more about their fellowship projects visit www.rauschenbergfoundation.org.
Chemi M. Rosado-Seijo
Rosado-Seijo will collaborate with local leaders in El Cerro, a rural working-class community embedded in the mountains of Naranjito, Puerto Rico, to devise creative workshops that facilitate local business creation, shared identity, and a sense of belonging.
Dalit Diva
#DALITWOMENFIGHT provides a multi-media platform for Dalit women who have survived sexual violence to tell their stories through shared art-making and social actions tied to the Dalit Women’s Self-Respect March, an international movement to end caste-based sexual violence in India.
Deanna Van Buren
To address social challenges that both lead to and have been created by mass incarceration, Van Buren has created The Pop-up Resource Village in Oakland, CA—converting de-commissioned MUNI buses into portable classrooms, computer labs, and safe houses for young adults trying to re-enter their communities after time in jail or prison.
Jasiri X
Pittsburgh native Jasiri X is developing a tool to help young, African-American men analyze and broaden their experience with media in order to dispel stereotypes and provide a positive forum of self-expression in a medium where African-American males are either under-represented or misrepresented.
People’s Climate Arts
People’s Climate Arts is building a network of artists, laborers, immigrants, youth, faith leaders and environmental justice organizations to create new narratives and strategies that ignite the public imagination around issues of social, economic, and climate justice.
Susan McAllister and Naomi Natale
The artists will work with Chilean partners to organize a series of community gatherings that excavate the competing, rarely discussed memories of the 1973 coup d’état, culminating in a physical and virtual Constellation of Chilean Memory.
About the Artist as Activist program
Since its pilot in 2012, the program has invested nearly $1,000,000 in 15 artists and 10 organizations working at the intersection of art and activism. This year, the program also provided travel and research grants to nine separate artists pursuing creative projects with a social purpose. For more information about the program, grantees, and fellows, visit www.rauschenbergfoundation.org.
About the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation
The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation fosters the legacy of the artist’s life, work, and philosophy that art can change the world. The foundation supports initiatives at the intersection of arts and issues that embody the fearlessness, innovation, and multidisciplinary approach that Robert Rauschenberg exemplified in both his art and philanthropic endeavors.
Media contact
Daryl Hannah, BerlinRosen Public Affairs: T +1 646 517 1829 / daryl.hannah [at] berlinrosen.com
