On November 16, 2023, from 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm ET at the Alumni Reading Room of Pratt Institute Library, Franklin Furnace unveiled the 2023-24 FF FUND for Performance Art recipients.
This event offered a special chance to applaud the ten fundwinners of this year and introduce them to a broader audience.
Each artist shared details about their newly funded projects, shedding light on the inspirations, thought processes, and methods that shape their upcoming performances.
Emcees Martha Wilson and Harley Spiller, special guest and FF alumn Joyce Yu-Jean Lee, panelists Arantxa Araujo, Jill McDermid, and Angel Nevarez, along with the general public attended in person. Franklin Furnace and Pratt Institute are proud to host this exceptional annual opportunity to connect with emerging and top-tier performance artists.
For both in-person and virtual participants, RSVP was encouraged for visitors from outside the Pratt campus. Friends and family were warmly invited to join us in celebrating this evening.
Video documentation of the November 16, 2023, (6:30-8:30 pm ET) event of Past, Present & Future IX. Recorded on Zoom, edited by Xinan Ran
2024-25 Recipients
This season marks the 39th anniversary of the Franklin Furnace FUND. Initiated in 1985 with the support of Jerome Foundation, Franklin Furnace has annually awarded grants to early career artists selected by peer panel review to enable them to prepare major performance art works in New York. This season, Franklin Furnace received 325 applications.
This year’s peer artist review panel met in early July and decided to award seven $5,500 and five 4,000 grants from support Franklin Furnace received from Jerome Foundation, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the members and friends of Franklin Furnace Archive.
Anh Vo
Artist Website: www.anhqvo.com
Project Description
“Possessed by Emotions” explores the risk of losing oneself in communing with otherness. If ghosts demand to be seen and heard despite our conscious wishes to exorcise them, how can performance create an intimate transitive space to seduce the necessary loosening of the individual will? Throughout 2024-2025, this practice manifests in a recurring series of solo and group performances, where the body is mobilized as a vessel to make contact with others’ energies and give them provisional forms to be put on public display. The performance will culminate in a week-long showing at a venue in Queens.
Biography
Anh Vo is a Vietnamese choreographer and writer based in New York City and Hanoi. Their practice fleshes out the body as a vessel for apparitional forces. Their latest body of work attempts to communicate the monotonous oppressiveness that is the weather of postwar contemporary Vietnam. Vo receive their degrees in Performance Studies from Brown University (BA) and New York University (MA). Significant grants and fellowships include Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, NYSCA/NYFA Fellowship in Interdisciplinary Art, USArtist International Grant, Disability Dance Artistry Fellowship, and Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art.
This work was made possible, in part, by the Franklin Furnace FUND 2024-25, supported by Jerome Foundation and the members and friends of Franklin Furnace Archive.
Malcolmx Betts
Artist Website: malcolmxbetts.com
Project Description
I’m seeking support to write, direct, and perform in part one of a new trilogy of performance art pieces titled “Black Utopias.” These performances embody Afrofuturism, Black mortality, and the African-centered ritual of ring shouts. The aim is to explore new somatic strategies and frameworks that dismantle historical trauma while generating new visions of the future from collaborators and audience members in real time. I aim to create a deep sense of community through experimentation, using real-time computer remixing, projection mapping, video coding, and image detection. The performances will feature dance, somatic exercises, archival elements, spoken words, and video.
Biography
Malcolm-x Betts is a New York based visual and dance artist who believes that art is a transformative vehicle that brings people and communities together. His artistic work is rooted in investigating embodiment for liberation, Black imagination, and directly engaging with challenges placed on the physical body. He has a community engagement practice allowing artistic freedom and making art accessible to everyone. Betts developed and presented work at La MaMa Umbria International in Spoleto, Italy. La Mama NYC, Gibney Dance Center, Movement Research at Judson Church, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), The Bronx Museum and Dixon Place. Betts showed excerpts of Midnight Glow: Kinfolk at Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX), Movement Research at Judson Church and Draftworks at Danspace Project. Kinfolk Vol 2: Butch Queen was persented by Judson Arts in November 2021. Betts worked on Bronx Speaks with the Bronx Musuem with undocumented immgrants. Performed in works by Snoogybox (Andy Kobilka), Nile Harris, Moriah Evans and Alex Romania. Betts was a 2018 Artist and Resident with Movement Research.
This work was made possible, in part, by the Franklin Furnace FUND 2024-25, supported by Jerome Foundation and the members and friends of Franklin Furnace Archive.
j. bouey
Artist Website: jbouey.com
Project Description
“A Message…” is an Afrofuturistic tale set in a near-post-oppression global society, tells the story of a Black queer dancer named Zion that attempts to end their life but instead meets their Black queer ancestors in the limbo space between life and death. Through the wisdom-filled messages sent to them by Nyx, a nurturing omnipresent primordial entity, Zion embraces the perpetual life and death cycle, and transforms into a phoenix named Mx. Black Copper.
Biography
j. is a 2023 Bessie Award Outstanding Performer recipient, served on the DanceNYC Taskforce and the Board of DanceUSA. j. is also the founder of The Dance Union Podcast, initiating the NYC Dancers COVID-19 Relief Fund and The Dance Union Town Hall For Collective Action to support the dance community through numerous world-changing events.
As a creator, j. is a recent 2021-2022 Jerome Fellow and is a 2022/2023 Movement Research Artist in Residence. j. bouey was also recently a 2024 ImPulsTanz | 8:tension Artist-in–Residence, 2023 STooPS Artist was also a Gibney 2021 Spotlight Artist, Artist-In-Residence at CPR – Center for Performance Research, and 2021 Bogliasco Fellow. j. was also a 2018 Movement Research Van Lier Fellow, 2018 Artist-in-Residence at the Dance and Performance Institute of Trinidad and Tobago, and a 2018 Dancing While Black Fellow. j. has presented their original work at JACK, Odeon Theater, Madura Studios, New York Live Arts, Judson Church, and more.
j. is currently a collaborator with nia love. They were also a former performer with Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, danced with Germaul Barnes’ Viewsic Dance, Maria Bauman’s MB Dance, Dante Brown, Antonio Brown Dance, Christal Brown’s INspirit Dance, and apprenticed with Emerge 125 (formerly Elisa Monte Dance) under the artistic direction of Tiffany Rea-Fisher.
This work was made possible, in part, by the Franklin Furnace FUND 2024-25, supported by Jerome Foundation and the members and friends of Franklin Furnace Archive.
Kimiko Tanabe
Artist Website: https://www.kimikotanabe.com
Project Description
“Welcome to Topaz” is an experimental performance art film and installation project that interweaves dance, visual arts, and archival practices to document myself pole dancing at the ruinous sites of Japanese American internment camps my family was incarcerated at during World War II. The video footage will be used to build a video installation activated by live pole performance presented in New York in August, 2025. This project is an intimate examination of America’s military scars on the land and the body.
Biography
Kimiko Tanabe (she/her) is a Brooklyn-based experimental dance artist interpreting Japanese American history through multidisciplinary performance. Her work integrates dance, installation, and design to create surreal performance art that is both playful and haunting. She works against the “model minority” myth and uses art as a space to investigate sites of power within Asian American identity that do not mirror systems of white dominance/violence.
Her work has been presented by the Center for Performance Research, Triskelion Arts Center, Colorado College, and the Brooklyn Arts Exchange. Kimiko is a MANCC Forward Dialogues AiR (2024) New Dance Alliance Artist in Residence (2024), Colorado College Crown Family Professorship for Innovation in the Arts Artist in Residence (2023), Brooklyn Arts Exchange Space Grant Recipient (2022), and Gallim Moving Artist Resident (2022).
This work was made possible, in part, by the Franklin Furnace FUND 2024-25, supported by Jerome Foundation and the members and friends of Franklin Furnace Archive.
Alex Romania
Artist Website: youwillconsumeus.com
Project Description
Alex Romania’s iterative performance series ‘The Mold Sessions’ combusts at the intersection of disciplines in deteriorative nonsense of the new baroque. Having recently completed the third work in a performance series entitled ‘Face Eaters’, a multimedia opera on apocalyptic grief, current research moves sonic and kinetic spaces in healing trances for the inconsolable. Through the continuum of art/life practice, transmorphic queries seek a body beyond the body, endless endings to expand beyond The End.
Biography
ALEX ROMANIA (NYU Tisch School of the Arts, 2013) is a multidisciplinary performing artist, improviser, and filmmaker, who has held residencies with MacDowell, Djerassi, Movement Research, Old Furnace, Tofte Lake Center, The Center for Performance Research, Chez Bushwick, and the Brooklyn Arts Exchange. Romania’s current projects include co-directing the film ‘RECKONING’ with Stacy Lynn Smith, the multidisciplinary opera ‘Face Eaters’ (Chocolate Factory Theater, May 2024), and co-directorship of the experimental documentary ‘Patch the Sky with Five Colored Stones’ conceived by choreographer Daria Faïn. In addition to creating original work which has been presented internationally at spaces such as Grace Exhibition Space, Abrons Arts Center, Encuentro, Casa Viva, UV Estudios, Sub Rosa Space, Romania has performed in various works by Kathy Westwater since 2013, and in the work of several artists such as Simone Forti, Éva Mag, Eddie Peake, Andy de Groat, Catherine Galasso. Romania has had multidisciplinary designs featured within works by Antonio Ramos, and has worked in various filmmaking roles with Marin Media Labs, TAAMAS / Sarah Riggs, Trixie Films / Therese Shechter, Christopher Unpezverde Nuñez, Martita Abril, and Sarah White-Ayòn.
This work was made possible, in part, by the Franklin Furnace FUND 2024-25, supported by Jerome Foundation and the members and friends of Franklin Furnace Archive.
Stephanie Mercedes
Artist Website: www.stephaniemercedes.com
Project Description
“We Shall Not Inherit the Earth” is a live performance combining improvised Arabic operatic singing, drones, electromagnetic microphones, string instruments, and dance to explore US surveillance as a tool of genocide. Electromagnetic microphones translate surveillance apparatus sounds into repressive controlled Western classical music. The conductor, musician, sheet music dynamic symbolizes the surveillance state, with rigid orchestral moments interrupted by powerful improvised Arabic operatic singing, contemporary dance, and percussion. All performers have experienced US surveillance as a tool of violence abroad. The performance will question the ethics of remote violence and genocide.
Biography
Mercedes is an uncategorized Queer Latinx artist who works in sculpture, opera, techno, choreography and sound. Their work revolves around creating rituals of mourning and rituals of liberation. Mercedes melts weapons to create instruments and sculptures. She also excavates missing violent histories. Mercedes has exhibited and performed at the Bronx Museum, the Queens Museum, the Smithsonian, the Kennedy Center and the National Gallery of Art. She has been funded by George Soro’s Open Society Foundation, Light Works, NALAC, The Foundation for Contemporary Art, WPA, The DC Commission for the Arts, the GLB Memorial Foundation, the Warhol Foundation and the Clarvit Fellowship. Mercedes has been an artist in residence at: the Bronx Museum, Halcyon Art Labs, S&R Foundation, Montgomery College, Christopher Newport University, SOMA, Lugar a Dudas, Largo das Artes and La Ira de Dios. Mercedes recently created her first opera “Never In Our Image” with CulturalDC.
This work was made possible, in part, by the Franklin Furnace FUND 2024-25, supported by Jerome Foundation and the members and friends of Franklin Furnace Archive.
Kyle b. co
Artist Website: http://kyleco.co/
Project Description
Critical Race Therapy (CRT) was developed as a way to provide a space to address, imagine and understand race as an object/lens/sense in our experience within a space of conversation that is not punitive or dictated by trauma (i.e. following the death of a black body, after the misstep of an institution, etc.). The first treatment of CRT centers around sound and feeling, Treatment 1/The Rhythm Treatment (T1). The performance is structured like a therapy session, taking place in a private 1 on 1 setting for a 45 minute to 2 hour period of time, ideally for multiple sessions.
Together we create sample packs of participants responses. Develop in session, participant’s “race songs” in hopes of producing an album, an object or experience that externalizes their perspective on race. Due to sensitivity around subject matter, participants are not explicitly identified.
Biography
Kyle b. co. (They/Them/Y’all | We/us/ours) is a trans-disciplinary artist, performer, educator and baker. Their work explores collage making through practices of printmaking, sculpture, installation, poetry, performance and set design. Their work spans both objects/installation and performance. The distinction between mediums not being that important. Their work is about feeling (&) connection(s).
As their personal experience informs the work, often times the subject matter considers queer, Black, crip and trans realities. They make work from the modalities they inhabit with the intention of fostering interactions beyond visibility.
Their work has found kinship at Hera Gallery (South Kingstown, RI), The R.I.S.D. Museum of Art (Providence, RI), Buoy Gallery (Kittery, ME), Zimmerli Museum of Art (New Brunswick, NJ), and Lucas, Lucas (Brooklyn, NY) among other spaces.
This work was made possible, in part, by the Franklin Furnace FUND 2024-25, supported by Jerome Foundation and the members and friends of Franklin Furnace Archive.
Estephania González
Artist Website: https://www.estephaniagonzalez.com/
Project Description
“Bordando Memorias del Agua” is a multimedia performance art installation exploring water conservation through personal sacrifice. Drawing upon Aztec and Latinx symbolism, this work confronts contemporary water issues through ritual hair cutting, embroidery, and video. The performance features water vessels and an embroidery station where water symbols are stitched using human hair. This work seeks to inspire collective awareness and prompt contemplation about our connection to water resources while advancing an artistic approach that examines environmental themes related to human presence, stewardship, and the passage of time.
Biography
Estephania González is an Arizona-based interdisciplinary artist specializing in performance art, video, and installation. Her work probes the intricate intersections of spacetime, cosmology, and Latinx identity. Anchored in the exploration of identity politics and their relation to physical and psychological borderlands, González crafts compelling narratives that reflect contemporary understandings of the human condition.
González has been featured in Hyperallergic, and published in “EMERGENCY INDEX” Volumes 9 and 10.She has been the recipient of several artist residencies, including Guapamacátaro in Michoacán, Mexico (2016), La Wayaka Current in the Atacama Desert, Chile (2019), and the 2024 CALA Regional Art Resident in Arizona.
Her exhibitions and performances span the U.S., Mexico, and Chile. González holds an MFA in Intermedia Art from Arizona State University, along with a BFA in Performance Art and a BA in Art History from the University of Northern Iowa.
This work was made possible, in part, by the Franklin Furnace FUND 2024-25, supported by Silicon Valley Community Foundation, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the members and friends of Franklin Furnace Archive.
Shola Cole aka Pirate Jenny
Artist Website: www.piratehaterjenny.com
Project Description
“Till the Othered BAWDY” is a performance exploring food justice, community and Agro-Ecology within QT/BIPoC agriculture. Embedded within “A Vanderful Life”, my larger, mobile vision of earth care, BAWDY places my time-traveling persona Pirate Jenny, into land justice. In alignment with the growing season Pirate Jenny will grow food directly on her body by using her time traveling tools crafted to cultivate produce for local communities impacted by food apartheid. Performances include viewers harvesting BAWDY’s produce and invited guests irrigating the BAWDY live or remotely. “Till the Othered BAWDY” will have multi-site activations including ArtLife Kingston, Three Phase Center and a final performance at Bushwick Grows! Community Garden.
Biography
Shola Cole aka Pirate Jenny (They/Themme & She/Hers) is a New York based performance artist and Afro-Caribbean/UK born immigrant. An artist, adult learner, neuro-queer and youthfully mature being unpacking their gender non-conforming edges – Cole explores radio, movement, drawing, figure modeling within a time traveling tool wearing persona, Pirate Jenny (PJ). Pirate Jenny embodies historical contexts of the Atlantic Slave Trade’s meeting point of the Golden Age of Piracy and a personal legacy as a Black/Queer/Lesbian and a former classically trained/traumatized musician. Cole is a proud life long learner and transformed anti-disciplinarian having navigated their Bachelors of General Studies(UConn) and their MFA in Interdisciplinary Studies at Mount Royal School of Art (MICA) later in life amidst so many capitalist systems. She is an alum of BAX’s EmergeNYC, Farm School NYC and Soul Fire Farm; having tracked dirt across Rock Steady, Ayni Herb, Down Bottom and Catalyst Collaborative Farms. Using their growing skills in land justice, Cole envisions a vibrant and evocative body of work that shifts a lens onto CPSTD, Burnout and Narcissistic Abuse. Additional praxes engage self care/rest as resistance, Black queer joy, acknowledged rage within resilience and centering low-to-no social media.
This work was made possible, in part, by the Franklin Furnace FUND 2024-25, supported by Silicon Valley Community Foundation, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the members and friends of Franklin Furnace Archive.
Koloto Siraji
Artist Website: https://sirajikoloto.com/
Project Description
“Nabbuzana” is a captivating exploration into the depths of African traditional rituals, particularly the hwambula ritual in Uganda, which seeks to liberate spirits ensnared by human constraints. This ongoing research and open space performance project digs into the concept of spiritual imprisonment, shedding light on the dynamics of nonhuman existence within Ugandan communities. “Nabbuzana” refers to the young spirits yearning for freedom, shackled by the servitude imposed upon them to serve human interests.
This performance challenges conventional narratives of colonialism, extending beyond human-to-human interactions to encompass a human-to-non-human perspective. Rooted in the ethos of decolonization and critique of capitalist practices, this work unfolds in phases, mirroring the journey from colonial oppression to liberation. Through evocative imagery and shape-shifting movements, I confront the emptiness of human consciousness and the relentless pursuit of power over the vulnerable.
Central to my narrative is the exploration of trans-generational trauma and the reincarnation of a spirit burdened by past afflictions. I provoke introspection on the responsibility of humanity to break the colonial chains binding nonhuman entities. As I navigate this terrain, I contemplate the broader implications of colonialism and advocate for the collective liberation of all beings from servitude
Biography
Koloto Siraji is a Ugandan conceptual artist, dancer and researcher whose multifaceted artistic practice traverses film, installation, and performance. Grounded in the rich philosophical fabric of Bagisu traditions, His work is a dynamic fusion of ancestral wisdom and contemporary expression. Central to Koloto’s artistic methodology is a profound engagement with Bagisu theories and philosophies of art. He merges traditional concepts with modern practices. This method prompts him to rediscover the ancient wisdom of dance by deconstructing Bagisu traditional dances and blending them with urban/street dance styles, creating a poignant set of movements that express a contemporary identity.
Navigating the realms of post-colonialism and decolonization, Koloto explores the human body as a medium to convey new narratives. Intrigued by the potential of the body in space and time to communicate information and encapsulate human experiences, His art is deeply rooted in his ancestry. A distinctive characteristic of Koloto’s artistic work is its refusal to offer direct answers. Instead, his work is a call to reflection, inviting the audience to feel, think, and question the complex dimensions of the topics his work addresses. Koloto is particularly interested in making people feel, think, and question aspects related to gender, politics, and climate change, human rights, social, and cultural issues, Triggering people to contemplate and take individual responsibility for their actions.
This work was made possible, in part, by the Franklin Furnace FUND 2024-25, supported by Silicon Valley Community Foundation, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the members and friends of Franklin Furnace Archive.
Jade Blackstock
Artist Website: https://www.jadeblackstock.com/
Project Description
‘How To Ground to Keep From Floating’ is a project comprised of a solo performance and installation; manifesting as a ritual for grief, a remedy for rootlessness, and a reckoning with loss. The durational performance incorporates molasses, soil, indigo powder and liquid vessels with gestures that hold a hand out to ghosts. Merging heavy, sweet smells, spillage, remembrance and quiet, the work reflects on a desire to step into an in-between-time; an attempt at collapsing time and space to explore the beauty and depth of non-linearity in the Black diasporic experience.
Biography
Jade (B. Birmingham, UK) is a performance artist. Her work explores conversations between inner/outer, bodily/material worlds, and how historical, cultural and personal movements inform them. She looks at Black ancestral traditions, myths and materialities that interrogate ongoing colonial systems and develop within Black diasporic contexts. She seeks to highlight how the body, material and space have shared capabilities of transferring and embodying collective memory, which bears importance in our understanding of selves and each other. Themes of race, feminism, rootlessness/rootedness, class and loss are present in her work. Jade earned her BA in Fine Art Practice and Psychology from the University of Worcester and her MA in Contemporary Art Practice: Performance from the Royal College of Art. Her work has been shown internationally, including in SPILL Festival of Performance, Ipswich, Alchemy Film Festival, Hawick, Scotland, the National Museum of Modern Contemporary Art in Seoul, South Korea, and Uppsala Konstmuseum, Sweden.
This work was made possible, in part, by the Franklin Furnace FUND 2024-25, supported by Silicon Valley Community Foundation, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the members and friends of Franklin Furnace Archive.
Lara Salmon
Artist Website: www.larasalmon.net
Project Description
“Pulse” is a durational performance and installation in which electricity regulates chronic pain within my body. The flow of electricity is controlled by sunlight and visitors, entering my body through electrodes attached to my skin. Pulse takes place in a space with a window in NYC, and is open to the public for 2-3 hours per day for two weeks. Pulse advocates for visibility around chronic pain, illness and disability, starting conversations on systemic barriers for these communities. I developed this project over several years, and performed the initial version (“sURGE”) at the MAK Center in Los Angeles.
Biography
Lara Salmon is a performance artist and activist whose work delves into the responsibilities of global citizenship, intricately woven with her experience of living in chronic pain. Having developed severe pain as an adolescent, Lara’s performances are defined by hyper vigilance to physicality. Her determination to manage danger within her body finds expression in the extremity, content and endurance of her work.
Lara lives in Los Angeles, California. She has spent much of her adult life in the SWANA region where she studied Arabic and became directly aware of the plight of Palestinian, Syrian and Iraqi refugees. These experiences have had great impact on her world view and, in 2021, Lara established the social justice apparel brand For Your Viewing Pleasure with her partner Vanessa Dahbour.
Lara has exhibited in the U.S., Cyprus, Germany, Lebanon, Morocco and Cuba. She has a BA from the University of California, Berkeley and an MFA from Claremont Graduate University. Lara was awarded the Grand Prix of the 2021 Larnaca Biennale in Cyprus. Her work has been reviewed in publications such as Artforum, Space On Space, The Invisible Archive, Alpha News, and the Los Angeles Daily News.
This work was made possible, in part, by the Franklin Furnace FUND 2024-25, supported by Silicon Valley Community Foundation, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the members and friends of Franklin Furnace Archive.
2024 Peer Review Panelists: Francheska Alcantara (fundwinner 2017), Bryan Zanisnik (fundwinner 2011), Caroline Garcia (fundwinner 2021), Ogemdi Ude (fundwinner 2021) and Justin Allen (fundwinner 2019)
2023-24 Recipients
This season marks the 38th anniversary of the Franklin Furnace FUND. Initiated in 1985 with the support of Jerome Foundation, Franklin Furnace has annually awarded grants to early career artists selected by peer panel review to enable them to prepare major performance art works in New York. This season, Franklin Furnace received 252 applications.
This year’s peer artist review panel met on July 18, 19, and 20, 2023 and decided to award five $5,900 and five 4,000 grants from support Franklin Furnace received from Jerome Foundation, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the members and friends of Franklin Furnace Archive.
Lina Azalea
Link to the performance: https://vimeo.com/996729143
Artist Website: https://www.linaazalea.com/
Project Description
“Light Meditation” is an evening length, multimedia dance work. The work uses lighted garments (such as dresses embedded with LED lights), projections, props, sculpture, and live sound. “Light Meditation” seeks to develop a novel visual language that uses light, or lack of, to reveal qualities, geometries, and truths about moving bodies that would otherwise not be observed.
Biography
Lina Azalea is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, and event producer based in New York City and the Hudson Valley. She specializes in multi-media performance and dance event creation. She uses movement, garments, sound, lighting, sculpture, and video art to alchemize a visualization of invisible forces, magnify locational essences, and manifest subconscious visions. Her work has been presented at New York Live Arts, ROSEKILL, Glasshouse Project, Green Kill, Trans-Pecos, Groundswell Series, Terrain Exhibitions, and more. She views the physicality of the body as a means to democratize spirituality and events centering movement art as a vehicle to do that. In 2017, she created the dance event series BADDANCE to challenge the notion that worthiness of dance work springs from refinement and to uphold the merit of confounding, obscene, experimental, strange, and very bad dance works. In 2022, she co-founded Momenta, a monthly dance and performance art event series in residence at Trans-Pecos. Raised in New York City, she graduated from SUNY Purchase in 2018. She currently runs a part-time DIY show house, BBB House, in Kingston, NY.
This artist was supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, and the friends and members of Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc.
Jesus Benavente
Link to the Performance: vimeo.com/941698782?share=copy
Artist Website: jesusbenavente.net
Project Description
“Paint and Pour and Pain and Poor” is a week-long performance in a rented/borrowed space in nyc. The performance takes the shape of a free to the public nightly “sip and paint” social event. However, instead of recreating an already made painting of a tree, or painting a still life. I and other hired performers will guide participants into a more deeply examined consideration of various societal issues (each night tackling a different issue). The performance turns audiences into fellow performers/artists as we guide them to consider our complicity in our social systems and provide an opportunity to collectively act.
Biography
Jesus Benavente is an amazing and attractive visual artist. Jesus earned an MFA from the Mason Gross School of Art at Rutgers University and attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Recent exhibitions and performances include Whitney Museum, New York, NY; Queens Museum, Queens, NY; LTD Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA; Performa 13, NY; Acre Projects, Chicago, IL; Chinati Foundation, Marfa, TX; Neuberger Museum of Art, NY; Shin Museum of Art, South Korea; Vox Populi, Philadelphia, PA; Socrates Sculpture Park, NY and Austin Museum of Art, TX. Born in San Antonio, TX, Jesus Benavente lives/works in Brooklyn, NY. San Anto es donde está mi corazón.
This artist was supported by Jerome Foundation, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, and the friends and members of Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc. Jerome Foundation support of the Franklin Furnace Fund is restricted to artists living in the five boroughs of New York City or the state of Minnesota.
Buffy
Artist Website: buffytheslut.com
Project Description
Exam. Summer 2024.
Cold steel, stripper heels, red light, neon glow, fan cam, girl dick, pill pop, pop show, tr*nny chaser, blood bath, sharp knife, electric needle, bio hack, med tech, new tits, dance sex, night music, slow death, live nudes, plastic pussy, latex grip, set list, work order, staged labor, contact high, contract no., thrust in, pull out, break open, come close, die later, buy now. buffytheslut.com/exam
Biography
Buffy is an artist and writer producing work about living horrors and dying beauties.
This artist was supported by Jerome Foundation, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, and the friends and members of Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc. Jerome Foundation support of the Franklin Furnace Fund is restricted to artists living in the five boroughs of New York City or the state of Minnesota.
Monstera Deliciosa
Link to the performance: https://vimeo.com/999142082
Artist Website: www.monsteradeliciosapresents.com
Project Description
What do trans-feminine people and Mermaids have in common? Well, they’ve both historically had terrible press – damn man-eaters! Courtesy of the male gaze, mermaids have always been depicted as seductive and predatory creatures. And, in today’s world, trans-feminine people still live through a similar reputation. ‘Na Sirena’ will lure you in to witness a performance-hybrid-installation conflating these parallel herstories. You’ll hear up-close the chant of one and all mermaids, you’ll witness her strut and stumble as she swims through life, Splish Splash! You’ll be caught in a web – or fishing net – of projections, sound and installation enmeshing cultures, iconographies and folklore to celebrate trans legacy and futurity beyond the confines of white western society.
No wax earplugs needed.
Biography
My name is Monstera Deliciosa.
I am no artist, but have inhabited spaces and practices that some would call artistic.
A she-they kind of womxn, I live through the joys of trans-feminism, the perils of visibility and the paradoxes – physical and philosophical – that existing outside of the gender binary brings (boo to assimilation!). My work endeavors to articulate this all – be it through the minutia of applying lipstick while dangling from a super tall balcony or the grandeur of my sticky breath imprinted against a gallery window front. Neither here nor there, but mostly all over, Monstera tries to unsettle what is perceived as spectacular, in a balancing act between endurance and elegance, compulsion and commotion.
Hope you still like her, if you hate her!
This artist was supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, and the friends and members of Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc.
Shawn Escarciga
Link to the performance: https://vimeo.com/920611876
Artist Website: https://www.shawnescarciga.com/
Project Description
Admin Reveal is the continuation of a project started during the Exponential Festival 2023 bridging my online presence as Miss Lady Salad with performance work, conversation with other digital creators, and a platform for IRL and URL interfacing. The internet is a tool for facilitating IRL interactions: Admin Reveal is an ongoing project aimed at blurring the line between online and in-person, validating the performance of the hyper-online with the performativity of existing in a queerphobic, classist, and ableist world.
Biography
Shawn Escarciga is a multidisciplinary maker, administrator, and connector working between performance, collage/memes (as Miss Lady Salad), comedy, and curation. Shawn’s work has explored labor and class; questioning value systems and hierarchies; and ways to balance being silly with tangible moves towards equity and care. Shawn thinks a lot about classism, visibility, access, the internet, intimacy amongst f-slurs, communication, being a little shit, and what it would be like to live in a country that supports non-commercial artists and poor people.
Their work has been seen throughout galleries, museums, sex parties, and DIY spaces across New York City, domestically, and abroad. They are a staff member of Visual AIDS, the founder and co-leader of the NYC Low-Income Artist and Freelancer Relief Fund, and also provide pro-bono fundraising support for queer artists across the country.
This artist was supported by Jerome Foundation, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, and the friends and members of Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc. Jerome Foundation support of the Franklin Furnace Fund is restricted to artists living in the five boroughs of New York City or the state of Minnesota.
Flowers in the Basement
Link to the performance: https://vimeo.com/949594065?share=copy
Project Description
“Flowers in the Basement” (FITB) is a multidisciplinary collective of artists specifically formed to both create a new original performance piece, and to speculate on radical alternatives to our current forms of reproductive labor. Using the “demon text” of second wave feminism, “The Dialectic of Sex” (Shulamith Firestone, 1970), as a jumping off point, the project offers an intergenerational, multiracial response to revolutionary demands for gender abolition, artificial reproduction, polyamory, child liberation, and “cybernetic communism.” The resulting performance will be structured like a variety show, with solo-authored performances by each collective member, and collaboratively devised ensemble acts.
Biography
Flowers in the Basement is the name of both a project and a collective consisting of Kite, Mel Elberg, Alisha B. Wormsley, Frances Ines Rodriguez, Tsedaye Makonnen, and Amy Ruhl formed to create new work and speculate on insurgent, utopian living. Bringing together a group of core collaborators working in vast fields of inquiry — Afrofuturism; queer, speculative, intersectional and Marxist feminisms, Lakota epistemologies; and African migration narratives — their mode of collaboration forges collectivity while respecting the autonomy of each artists’ individual praxis.
This artist was supported by Jerome Foundation, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, the Board of Directors, and the friends and members of Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc. Jerome Foundation support of the Franklin Furnace Fund is restricted to artists living in the five boroughs of New York City or the state of Minnesota.
Sara Kostic
Artist Website: http://sarakostic.com/
Project Description
Tender is a performance art piece that continues my research about sugar, its history, its present, its influence on the mind and body, and as a metaphor for a consumeristic, colonial, click-bate society.
Biography
Sara Kostić (she/her) is a Serbian interdisciplinary artist whose creative practice spans the domains of performance, visual arts, and architecture. She has an academic background in architecture design and is an alumna of EmergeNYC and PerformanceHUB
Her work incorporates various phenomenology related to the social, political, and physical body, questioning the transformative relations between borders and possibilities.
She is actively involved in the international performance art scene and has performed at MoCA Belgrade (Serbia), Venice International Performance Art Week (Italy), Biennale in Mardin (Turkey), Grace Exhibition Space (New York), and others. She is holding guest lectures and workshops with a focus on site-specific performance – how architecture, its history, and use, shape the concept – at institutions and collectives such as RUFA (Rome, Italy), Magacin (Belgrade, Serbia), and others.
This artist was supported by Jerome Foundation, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, and the friends and members of Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc. Jerome Foundation support of the Franklin Furnace Fund is restricted to artists living in the five boroughs of New York City or the state of Minnesota.
Elina Kulikova
Artist Website: www.elinakulikova.com
Project Description
Lost Places is an olfactory immersive performance on the issue of the politics of memory. The category of home more often appears to be a lost or forgotten space in the world which is falling apart. Especially for people who experienced exile or refuge. The show is based on 7-8 documentary stories with the focus on the psycho-geography of speakers, and invites the audience to look at their physical and emotional memories of lost homes both as a real place with some objects, smells, temperature and interior and an existential space of their identity.
Biography
Elina Kulikova, (born in St. Petersburg, Russia)— a theatre director, performance artist, and writer; a participant of international theatre festivals and laboratories. Graduated from the Liberal Arts and Sciences course at St. Petersburg State University and Bard College (NY, USA) in 2019. Based in Lausanne, Switzerland.
As a performance artist, mainly makes interactive and immersive performances and installations combining conceptual and processual approaches in the field of participatory art. She is exploring the boundaries of performative practices and creating multidisciplinary projects: performances for one viewer, weeks and months-long performances, and site-specific and digital performances.
The major theme of her political theatre is ‘a catastrophe as a principal feature of today’s time’. Elina does projects both on global aspects and individual voices raising the issues of war conflicts, social and political injustice, terrorism, and ecological and feminist utopias.
After the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, she left Russia and experienced political prosecution because of her anti-war position. She has already created several anti-war performances and texts and continues reflection on these events in her work.
This artist was supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, and the friends and members of Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc.
Nima Nikakhlagh
Artist Website: https://www.nimanikakhlagh.com/
Project Description
All Clear, a 54-year-old nude white woman wrapped with barbed wire embraced by the artist (a nude man of color). The two stand facing each other in the public space; the nudity can be obscured by the positioning of the bodies. This performance aims to force spectators, confronted with the harsh physicality of the work, to careful consideration – or re-consideration – of ongoing, unresolved, problematic societal themes. It explores the power dynamics in gender and identity politics, and cultural and legal enforcement of gender roles and gender-dependent rights, but offers many possible interpretations, limited only by the viewers’ personal experiences.
Biography
Nima Nikakhlagh is a multidisciplinary artist, native to Iran, who arrived in the United States in 2014. He is currently living and raising his daughter in Western Massachusetts. Nima’s practice concerns itself with socio-political power dynamics, political resistance, and non-violent action approached in a poetic manner. Most of his works are performance-based, and he perceives performance art as not only a form of visual art, but much more, a social-political art form and a social-political art practice. In his words, “the togetherness that performance art establishes is something truly necessary.” Nima’s works have appeared/been performed in Iran, Europe, Canada, and the United States. He has published two literary-performative books: Bodies, Languages, Truths and This Is Not a Book.
This artist was supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, and the friends and members of Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc.
Nickolas Vaughan
Artist Website: https://www.nickolasvaughan.com/
Project Description
Let Me Check In The Back– is a hybrid, immersive solo performance set in a fictional popup clothing store. This 50 minute guided performance will take place two times throughout the course of one day and will incorporate spoken text, improv, choreographed movement, video projections and sound composition. The audience will be led into the store’s backroom, a liminal space where they will bear witness to a delayed-coming-of-age story, told from the Black queer perspective of the store’s sales associate. Using elements of Afrofuturism, this project will explore ancestral trauma, intersectionality of being black and queer, and unabashed self-love.
Biography
Nickolas Vaughan is an LA based multi-hyphenate creative artist, filmmaker, actor and producer from Mobile, Alabama. At an early age, Nickolas expressed a love for filmmaking and performing, which prompted his parents to purchase a camcorder for him to create his own films. After receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Howard University, he began his professional acting career in Washington, DC, where he performed extensively at prominent theaters including: The John F. Kennedy Center, Ford’s Theatre, Signature Theatre and Studio Theatre.
Nickolas later moved to New York where he utilized his skills in photo manipulation, video editing, art direction, music composition, and world building to co-create Show:UP!, an immersive, interactive, theatrical dining experience. Show:UP! has been presented in New York, Detroit and DC.
In 2019, Nickolas wrote, produced and starred in ’Til You Make It, a one-man show presented in both Los Angeles and New York. ’Til You Make It, was selected into the TAG Solo Festival at The Actors’ Group in Burbank, CA.
Nickolas took center stage again in 2022, to further explore the intricacies of black gay identity. He unveiled his latest creation, Project Nick Vaughan, at The Flea Theater. This time, his live theater showcase was a fusion of original orchestral compositions and interactive video installations.
Throughout his artistic career, Nickolas has worked behind the scenes on various television presentations including, Hart Of It All with Kevin Hart and Bruno Mars: Live at the Apollo. He is currently a producer for HBO’s Emmy & Peabody Award winning series, We’re Here and co-producer of HBO’s Rom-Doc series, Swiping America. In his “free” time, Nickolas enjoys sewing, crafting and building furniture.
This artist was supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, and the friends and members of Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc.
2023 Peer Review Panelists: Arantxa Araujo (Fundwinner 2019), Amy Khoshbin (Fundwinner 2017), Jill McDermid, Gylbert Coker and Angel Nevarez (Fundwinner 2006).
This project is made possible with funds from Jerome Foundation, SHS Foundation, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the members and friends of Franklin Furnace Archive.
