Congratulations Andre Keichian, Alice Könitz, Jasmine Orpilla, Ashunda Norris, Matthew Lax, Jisoo Chung and Carmen Amengual,
New Work: Focus on Los Angeles, 2023 Grantees!
On to our FINALISTS, Jemima Wyman, 3B Collective, Franco Castilla, Jinseok Choi, and Simone Montemurno.
Andre Keichian is an interdisciplinary artist and educator working across photography, video, and sculptural installations. Keichian’s work exists at the intersection of image, sound, and movement, conjuring fluid identities. His intra-disciplinary practice draws on the materiality of performance, image, movement, and mass to explore the boundaries of presence and absence, realism and abstraction, proximity and distance, and tangible and the ephemeral.
His work has been shown both nationally and internationally at spaces such as the Metropolitan Cultural Center (Ecuador), The Craft Contemporary Museum (Los Angeles), Zuckerman Museum of Art (Georgia), El Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas (Buenos Aires), Museum of Contemporary Art Atlanta, and Anthology Film Archives (New York), among others. Keichian has completed various residencies, including The Echo Park Film Center, at land’s edge, The Camera Obscura and WonderRoot. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles.
About the proposed project:
Reel in the Gap is an experimental film project that investigates the artist’s family’s convoluted history of displacement. This work draws out the relationship between diaspora and the transgender body by thinking through process, materiality, and archives to explore in-between spaces, embodiments of transformation, and speculative interpretations of what an archive can do.
Image courtesy of Ian Byers-Gambler 
Alice Könitz, (born in Essen, Germany; lives and works in Los Angeles)
Könitz has presented her work in numerous exhibitions, including the 2008 Whitney Biennial, the 2014 Made in LA Biennial, Galerie Nächst St. Stephan (Rosemarie Schwarzwälder), Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, the Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, and the Museum of Mülheim/Ruhr. Her work is represented by Commonwealth and Council. Könitz holds an MFA from Cal Arts and an Akademiebrief and Meisterschülerbrief from the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf. Awards and fellowships include the DAAD fellowship, the Förderpreis zum Ruhrpreis, the Kreativkraftpreis/Mülheim, the COLA individual artist fellowship, and the Mohn Award.
About the proposed project:
“Experiencing extreme heat caused by wildfires in Southern California in the fall of 2020, I became fascinated by the possibility of modulating airflow through the shape of an object. I learned that termite mounds have a very complex and sophisticated system for temperature regulation based on their symbiotic relationship with a fungus. Inspired by their fungal growth structures (fungus combs), I made a transparent, geometric glass sculpture that sets up a framework for mycelium to grow. The process of creating a hospitable environment for the fungus led me to create a temperature-controlled environment inadvertently reminiscent of termite architecture.”
Jasmine Orpilla is a multi-voiced Fil-Am performance artist and composer of operatic sound installations that remain continually grounded by her lifelong-studied practices of folk dance, martial combat systems, epic chant and indigenous music of the Philippines.
About the proposed project:
Orchestra for Knives is a micro sound-based experimental visual work composed of the specific movements literally drawn by Jasmine Orpilla's personal collection of over 25 knives, a secret number of which are directly inherited from her family in the Philippines.
Ashunda Norris is a Black feminist multidisciplinary artist with creative work that encompasses film, poetry, archiving and her own theoretical frameworks. She has written, directed, and produced several short films, including her most recent multi-award-winning cinematic gesture, MINO: A Diasporic Myth; now streaming on kweliTV. A two-time Furious Flower Poetry Prize finalist, Ashunda holds fellowships from Cave Canem, Torch Literary Arts, the California Arts Council, Brooklyn Poets, and Starshine & Clay. Her writing has been featured or is forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, Salamander, Gulf Coast, Obsidian, Taint Taint Taint, Root Work Journal, Fence, and elsewhere. Born and raised in the heart of rural, red clay Georgia, Ashunda is now a bonafide, citified bitch living and dreaming in Los Angeles.
About the proposed project:
The Negress Digs Up Her Past: an analog film photography project that explores the ancestral lineage of my family, its longstanding connection to African Religious Traditions and the conceptualization of the Black Church. Using ancestral lineage keeping to record my bloodline's Hoodoo traditions, the images document the Elders of my lineage and the Black Southern community where I come from. Refusals\reluctance to migrate, how the Black Southern landscape and ancient stories make up who we are in contemporary living and engagement with the spirit realm is the foundation of this body of work.
Matthew Lax is a quadruplet, experimental filmmaker, artist and writer. Lax’s films and video installations have been presented at Viennale (Austria), IHME Contemporary (Helsinki), Rencontres Internationales (Paris/Berlin), MIX New York, table (Chicago), Los Angeles Contemporary Archive (LACA), REDCAT, Winnipeg Underground Film Festival, and The Drawing Center (New York), among others. Lax’s organizational projects have been held at Anthology Film Archives (NY), Fellows of Contemporary Art (LA), and Human Resources LA. Lax’s writing has appeared in publications including MARCH Journal, Texte Zur Kunst, Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB), and ArtPractical.
About the proposed project:
The experimental documentary Gay Men’s Book Club (GMBC) brings together seven homosexuals, all strangers to one another, to discuss the book "Elite Capture" by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò. Based on an actual book club Lax participated in, these unscripted conversations, facilitated by the artist in collaboration with community organizer, founding member of the radical faeries, and Jungian psychologist Dr. Don Kilhefner, explore Táíwò’s concept of elite capture as it relates to community, privilege, organizing, and intersectionality. GMBC is an intergenerational portrait of the group dynamics found within social environments.
Jisoo Chung is an artist based in Los Angeles and Seoul who primarily uses video and installation. She focuses on sociocultural languages constructed within quotidian objects and technology to explore language and the loss of one’s agency. Nonsense, mistranslations, personifying objects, and non-human perspectives are used in her works to re-navigate the constructed idea of the self. Chung’s work has been shown in numerous places internationally, including Ujeongguk, Seoul (2023); Matsutake Gallery, Paris (2023); Frieze Film, Seoul(2022); and she is a fellow of MacDowell Residency(2024). Chung received an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a BFA at Seoul National University.
About the proposed project:
Flower Blooms Only After Surviving A Harsh Winter is an extended sculptural work of Chung’s recent experimental documentary film, “Miss Kim Lilac,” − a story about a lilac tree that was brought to America from its native Korea. The new work will be an imagined material embodiment of Miss Kim Lilac, whose identity is lost in translation and transformation due to its migration.
Carmen Amengual is an Argentinian interdisciplinary artist and experimental filmmaker based in Los Angeles. Her practice engages with research, archives, literature, myths, and oral histories and examines the interstice between memory, biography and history. Amengual has exhibited at Artists Space, New York; NYSSS Gallery, Brooklyn; Human Resources, Echo Park Film Center, and E.D. Freeman Gallery, Los Angeles; table, Chicago; Biquini Wax, Mexico City; Museo Trabucco in Buenos Aires. Amengual is a Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program 2021-22 Fellow, and a 2022-24 Vera List Center for Arts and Politics artist fellow. She holds an MFA from CalArts.
About the proposed project:
Amengual will develop a political “operetta” using experimental filmmaking and puppetry techniques. In the piece, animated objects discuss hot topics in current politics (immigration, militarization, climate change, the economy, etc.), engaging with the ongoing crisis of democracy and the rise of authoritarianism in the West. The objects are animated as marionettes as they sing, dance, and present their arguments. The piece invites the viewer to seriously consider this crisis and its historical manifestations through absurdist humor, songs, and a script documenting the uses and the naturalization of authoritarian political rhetoric and practices.
Jemima Wyman is an Australian-born, Los Angeles-based artist who is represented by Commonwealth & Council, Milani Gallery, and Sullivan + Strumpf. She will have a new commission, 'Dissent Atlas,' included in PHOTO24.
“My art practice investigates camouflage as a social, formal, and political strategy. A key component of my practice is the MAS-archive (2008 - ongoing), which contains over 5,000 images of street protesters using various camouflage tactics, including masks, patterned coverings, and smoke, which I draw on to create new work.”
Image Courtesy of Christian Cupurro
3B Collective is a collective of Indigenous and Chicano artists that produce original works, site-specific installations, and murals. 3B has produced works at UCLA, UCSD, El Museo Infantil in Oaxaca, Mexico, LAXART, The Mistake Room, the Hammer Museum, LACE, La Plaza de Cultura y Arte, the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, the City of Inglewood, San Diego City College, Residency Art Gallery, and the Hilda F. Solis Care First Center. Each member of 3B follows their individual art practice and have exhibited in at galleries in New York, San Diego and Mexico.
Image Courtesy of Sam Wohl
Franco Castilla was born in Managua, Nicaragua. He has a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and an MFA from Ohio State University. His work draws from personal memories, family narratives, and the history of Nicaragua to explore identity, dislocation and placelessness, and a process of assimilation and belonging. He has exhibited his work in many venues throughout Los Angeles, including LACMA, Elephant, LAST Projects, and LACE.
Jinseok Choi is an interdisciplinary artist who investigates our current cultural moment by researching historical and cultural contexts and weaving together seemingly unrelated issues via sculpture, installation, performance, and video. His recent works have been shown at various art venues, including Amado Art Space, Human Resources Los Angeles, The Box, and Werkarts. He has participated in residency programs, such as Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, The Studios at Mass MoCA, and Vermont Studio Center.
“I am invested in exploring the points of connection between disparate cultures, social classes, and histories, as well as how these disparities have a marginalizing effect on social groups shaped by Western hegemony. By integrating residues, byproducts, and imprints born of labor, time, memories, and histories, I seek to honor the physical, collective presence of all we have left behind in our labors.”
Simone Montemurno was born in Manila, Philippines. She has a photography and art history background, and she moved to Los Angeles to earn her MFA from CalArts (2011). Montemurno has an upcoming solo exhibition at Art in the Park (L.A), and the record label Ha Ha will release a cassette edition of her collaborative work with artist/composer Byron Westbrook.
“I work in multiple mediums–from a series of paintings, photographic books, to vinyl records–forms that are threaded together by ideas of material remembrance. I ruminate on the value of objects --whether sentimental, material, political, mystical or otherwise.”
Image Details: After Kolar (Homeland, 1922-1957) 2019
mixed media on paper, found paintings, artist's frame, audio component of spoken narrative New Work: Focus on Los Angeles
2023 Review Committee
Jennie E. Park is a South Korea(n)-born first generation American immigrant artist and writer committed to integrated approaches to honesty. She has written for Artillery and other publications, received MOZAIK Future Art Awards and a Future Art Writers Award and is a '23 - '24 CA Arts Council Emerging Artist Fellow and '23 - '24 CA Arts Council Creative Corps artist grantee through Arts Council for Long Beach. She received her MFA from CalArts in Art and Creative Writing and has graduate degrees in law and cognitive psychology.
Based in San Diego, CA, Rebecca Romani holds an MA in Television, Film, and New Media from San Diego State. Her video work has been shown on 4 continents, and her documentaries have been recognized at festivals. She writes mainly about art, the US/Mexico border and Middle Eastern American affairs. Her work has appeared in publications from Cineaste to the Christian Science Monitor. Her artwork focuses on identity and language and her work is now in private collections and the Centro Cultural de la Raza in San Diego. She also curates art shows and moderates film screenings in San Diego and has contributed essays to artist monographs published by Natsoulas Press. She has lived and worked in Belgium, France, and Morocco.
Mayookh Barua is an LA-based writer from India who is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Creative Writing and Literature Department at USC. He holds an MFA in Fiction from NCSU. His work explores sexuality, art, mythology, education and family through a queer South-Asian voice. A 2023 Roots.Wounds.Words Non-Fiction fellow, MOZAIK Philanthropy’s 2023 Future Art Writers Award winner, and a Dorianne Laux Poetry Prize 2023 Finalist, his works appear in The Audacity by Roxane Gay, The Gay & Lesbian Review, Litro Magazine, Espace Art Actuel, The Third Eye, Mezosfera Magazine and elsewhere.
Luciana Abait was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina and is currently based in Los Angeles. Her multimedia works deal with climate change, environmental fragility, and their impacts on immigrants. Abait’s artworks have been shown widely in the United States, Europe, Latin America, and Asia in solo shows in galleries, museums, and international art fairs. Selected solo exhibitions include Escape-Route at Laguna Art Museum, On the Verge at Hilliard Art Museum in Louisiana, A Letter to The Future at Los Angeles International Airport in California, Flow, Blue at Rockford College Art Museum in Illinois, and ARCO in Spain. Abait’s works and her focus on environmental activism have been featured in The Art Newspaper, Los Angeles Times, Hyperallergic, Aesthetica, and Stir World, among others. This work has led to her invitation as a Guest Speaker at the Culture Summit 2024 in Abu Dhabi, UAE. Abait’s works are held in private, public, and corporate collections from the United States, Europe, Latin America, and East Asia.
Los Angeles-based Puerto Rican artist, Monica Rodriguez (b.1980), art practice looks at the history and impact of Colonialism on the political, economic, and social conditions in the Americas and the Caribbean region. Rodriguez obtained an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in 2011, was a fellow at the Whitney Independent Study Program, New York in 2012-13. Rodriguez has exhibited her work internationally, group exhibitions include Contemporary Art Museum of St. Louis (2022), TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes, Santa Cruz, Spain (2021); Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU, Richmond, VA (2020); Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Puerto Rico, San Juan, PR (2019); Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA (2019); LACE Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Los Angeles, CA (2019); Glass Curtain Gallery, Columbia College, Chicago, IL (2018); 19th Contemporary Art Festival Videobrasil, Sao Paulo, Brazil (2015); among others.
Ciara Ennis is the Director of de Saisset Museum, Santa Clara University, developing the vision, artistic direction, and strategic leadership for the museum. Previously, Ennis was the Director and Curator of Pitzer College Art Galleries, transforming it into a significant center for contemporary art and discourse through intellectually provocative initiatives focused on diverse communities of artists exploring issues that define our times. A Museum Studies scholar, Ennis’ research explores the appropriation of Wunderkammer strategies as a means for rethinking contemporary curatorial practice. Ennis has been a panelist and guest speaker for the College Arts Association, American Studies Association, the International Sculpture Conference, the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries, the California Community Foundation, the Rijksakademie Amsterdam, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. She has an MA (RCA) in Contemporary Curatorial Practice from the Royal College of Art, and a PhD in Cultural Studies/Museum Studies from Claremont Graduate University. Ennis is a member of Prospect Art’s Advisory Board.
Alan Nakagawa is an interdisciplinary artist with archiving tendencies, primarily working with sound, often incorporating various media and working with communities and their histories. He is currently the artist-in-resident at the Gerth Archives, California State University Dominguez Hills assigned to the newly acquired Los Angeles Free Press/Art Kunkin Collection. His first book, “A.I.R.Head: Anatomy of an Artist in Residence” was published in January 2023 by Writ-Large Press and maps his artistic trajectory that led to his nine artist-in-residencies in six years.
Prima Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai is a transdisciplinary artist and curator, working across performance, video and installation, currently based in Los Angeles. Their research-based practice explores ways for identity and a sense of belonging to remain undetermined while questioning dominant narratives of history and nationalism. They were born in Bangkok, Thailand, before their family moved to Europe, where they spent their formative years. They came to the US in 2011. They received their Visual Arts Degree from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Nantes Metropole and a License in Film Studies at the Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3. They hold a BFA from the School of the Arts Institute of Chicago and an MFA from the California College of the Arts in San Francisco. They are a recipient of the SOMA Summer Award, Mexico City in 2016, and the Emi Kuriyama Spirit Award in 2020.
They curated the MAHA Pavilion at the Bangkok Biennial 2020 and Tactics of Erasure and Rewriting Histories at Craft Contemporary in 2022 and at ReflectSpace Gallery at the Glendale Central Library in 2023.