The Fine Arts Work Center welcomed 10 visual arts fellows this month for seven-month-long residencies in Provincetown.
Executive Director Sharon Polli says the fellowship program is central to the Work Center’s purpose.
“We were founded more than 50 years ago with a mission to provide emerging artists and writers with time and space to develop new directions in their creative practice,” says Polli. “This mission remains as vital today as it was then. By nurturing artists, we shape contemporary culture.”
The fellows — 10 each in visual arts and writing — are selected through a rigorous jury process that focuses primarily on work samples, Polli says. The jury is made up of leading figures in art and writing, many of whom were once FAWC fellows themselves.
“We receive upwards of 1,500 applications from around the world and ultimately select 20 fellows,” says Polli. “Unlike other residencies, we do not ask for letters of recommendation. We review the work submitted with a goal of identifying exciting emerging artists and writers who would benefit at this moment in their careers from seven months of uninterrupted time and space.” This year’s class of fellows was announced on June 17.
The 10 2022-23 FAWC visual arts fellows are:
Blake Daniels, who lives and works in Brooklyn and Johannesburg, South Africa, makes paintings that reveal social histories and incorporate traditions of storytelling, queer culture, and memory. Daniels’s paintings are colorful and full of movement, with rich detail and fierce emotion.
Born in Toronto, Georgia Dickie creates art from found objects. Her assemblies, which range widely in size and shape, rebalance the assigned values and meaning of the objects they incorporate and challenge the ways we are conditioned to see the world.
Mark Joshua Epstein, who lives and works in Ann Arbor, Mich., paints in three dimensions, often in bright colors, using whimsical shapes and patterns. He explores queer ornament and graphic excess with a particular focus on intricate pattern making.
Elizabeth Flood grew up in Virginia. Her paintings and drawings are made outdoors and recreate American landscapes with stunning expressivity, bringing swirls of rock, curls of cloud, high mountains, and low battlefields to life on the canvas. Flood is a second-year fellow.
Yahna Harris worked in the film industry in Boston before moving to Los Angeles. Her work explores the ways time is viewed and experienced – in futures we can’t see yet, in generational memory, and deep in the body.
Kristy Hughes creates sculptures and paintings that are unapologetic in their striking colors, confident arrangements, and unconventional shapes — all of which express themes of empowerment and potential for change.
Born in Seoul, South Korea, Siennie Lee makes art that observes, captures, and comments on global society. Using contemporary photographs, articles, and sounds, her works suggest more than what is seen. Lee has held exhibitions in Korea, the United States, and Germany, and has worked as a travel writer, publishing two books in Korea.
Pieter Paul Pothoven lives and works in Amsterdam. His art includes installations, photography, and writing. Historiography — the study of historical writing — is a throughline in all of his projects. His works sometimes feel otherworldly and, at other times, entirely of our strange world. Pothoven is a second-year fellow.
Tinja Ruusuvuori is an artist and filmmaker from Tampere, Finland who creates documentary film, video, and mixed-media installations. Humor is central to her practice: according to her artist statement on the Fine Arts Work Center website, “Misbehaving and utopias are close to her heart.”
Sichong Xie, who currently lives in Los Angeles, makes body-based sculptures that combine movement with different materials. Her work reimagines traditional sculptural forms in new materials and contexts, and questions identity and the role of the body.
“We are excited about this group,” says Polli. “This cohort includes a diversity of artistic perspectives and mediums. They arrived here in Provincetown from around the globe.”
The fellows will be featured in solo exhibitions in the public spaces of the Work Center starting in February. The exhibitions will take place through the end of April.
