Creative Research Grants
Zain Alam
Visual Arts
Brooklyn, NY
2025
Zain Alam, an artist and composer, will conduct fieldwork for the next iteration of his multi-channel installation series, Meter & Light, which reimagines the rhythms of sacred time in Islam through a mix of choreographed and documentary material. Alam will travel across South Asia to study social and ritual life as well as poetic and musical forms such as ghazal, naat, and qawwali. (Photo by Marissa Alper)
Carmen Amengual
Visual Arts
Los Angeles, CA
2025
Carmen Amengual, an interdisciplinary artist, will begin a new phase of her long-term, moving image project exploring the legacy of the 1973 and 1974 Third World Filmmakers Meetings. Amengual will trace the afterlives of specific films by traveling to European archives to access and assess the condition of rare and endangered works and train in analogue film processing and preservation.
Ian Andrew Askew
Performance Art/Theater
Brooklyn, NY
2025
Ian Andrew Askew, an artist working in music and performance, will develop a new interactive sonic instrument and performance installation exploring the moshpit as a site of ritual and release. Askew will spend time with core collaborators and community to design and prototype the SLAMDANCE pit simulator—a new instrument that converts physical impact into live sound. (Photo by Machel Ross)
Eliza Bagg
Music/Sound
Los Angeles, CA
2025
Eliza Bagg, a vocalist and composer, will develop a sonic and physical language that merges polyphonic vocal writing, ambient electronics, and movement to reimagine Renaissance vocal forms. Her research into 16th- and 17th-century madrigals will inform her use of complex electronic processing to compose a multi-layered vocal work that investigates historical and contemporary concepts of femininity and maternal identity.
Morgan Bassichis
Performance Art/Theater
Brooklyn, NY
2025
Morgan Bassichis, a comedic performer and writer, will begin their research for a new performance about Amy Winehouse. They will convene an ensemble of musicians to revisit her first show in the US (at Joe's Pub in 2007) and participate in fan-led walking tours in London to commune with Winehouse as musician, messenger, and martyr. (Photo by Bronwen Sharp)
Maura Brewer
Visual Arts
Astoria, NY
2025
Maura Brewer, a video and performance artist, will develop an essay film and multi-channel video installation tracing the origins of art-backed lending and the role of financial instruments in shaping the contemporary art world. She plans to conduct interviews and take out a loan against one of her own artworks to investigate how debt operates differently across class.
mayfield brooks
Dance
Rockaway Beach, NY
2025
mayfield brooks, a choreographer and performance artist, will develop dArK oXyGen, a sonic dance exploring the spiritual and ecological dimensions of Blackness, gospel sound, and breath. brooks will study mouth anatomy with a vocal coach and a dentist (among others) and travel to the Azores to pursue an open water diving certification to research underwater sound, breath, and movement. (Portrait photo by Emily Farthing)
Rashida Bumbray
Performance Art/Theater
Baltimore, MD
2025
Rashida Bumbray, a choreographer and curator, will develop a new performance work inspired by the porch parties of Piedmont Blues musician and dancer Algia Mae Hinton. Bumbray will travel with collaborators to North Carolina to study the Blues and flatfooting traditions associated with Hinton, whose dynamic buck dancing style and porch performances embodied community, music, and movement.
Wally Cardona
Dance
Brooklyn, NY
2025
Wally Cardona, a choreographer and dancer, will return to the intimacy of experimenting with dancers in the studio after nearly a decade of working solo. Plans involve several multi-week working periods, with intentional breaks between, to provide space to initiate, integrate, discard and return, via improvisation and the extremes of familiarity and estrangement.
Miguel Alejandro Castillo Le Maitre
Dance
Brooklyn, NY
2025
Miguel Alejandro Castillo Le Maitre, an interdisciplinary performance artist, will develop ELMO-MENTO, an ongoing choreographic and ethnographic collaboration with New Yorkers working as cartoon characters in Times Square. Castillo will conduct Spanish-language interviews with performers, hold labs to translate field research into embodied improvisational scores, and engage in archival and dramaturgical research. (Photo by Jan Rattia)
