CM20 Reichmann Project Grant Recipients!
Alanna Airitam‘s series The Golden Age honors Black culture while addressing how art history and museum curation largely omits any reference to it. Connections and contrasts between the Dutch Renaissance (17th c. Holland) and the Harlem Renaissance (20th c. New York City) are a focal point for Alanna with attention to the ideas of enlightenment and abundance.
In her series MADRE, Marisol Mendez strives to challenge the deeply embedded machismo of her native Bolivia and dissects the Catholic dogmas of what the definition of femininity should be. She weaves mythological elements of Andean tradition into her imagery, which share elements of both fiction and documentary work.
Emeke Obanor is a Nigeria-based photographer whose portrait series Tree of Freedom tackles the fact that many girls kidnapped by the Boka Haram sect are still in captivity. As part of this series, he photographs uplifting letters of hope and courage written by activists to the captive girls, as a type of prayer for their survival and safety.
Andre Ramos-Woodard shares his series a mediocre-ass nigga with us as a method of communicating the repercussions of personal, contemporary, and historical discrimination. He leans toward an auto-biographical narrative to synthesize Black cultural issues such as stereotypes, discrimination, and microaggressions that wear people down – and aims to re-contextualize the connected vocabulary.
In La Caravana del Diablo 2020, Ada Trillo documents Honduran citizens escaping violence and dismal conditions by forming a massive migrant caravan that winds its way through Guatemala into Mexico, while attempting to seek asylum. Many were met with tear gas, kept in detention centers, and eventually deported back to Honduras.
