Meet Creative Capital’s 63 Award-Winning Artists, Writers, and Performers

The categories are literature, performing arts, and emerging fields.

Liz Glynn. Photo: HungerTV.

Creative Capital‘s 2016 class of award winners includes 63 artists working on 46 projects in three categories: literature, performing arts, and emerging fields, which includes multimedia and interdisciplinary works, digital art, biological art, and sound art. The nonprofit is known for championing artists with innovative and boundary-breaking notions of genre (as evidenced by the inclusion of “biological art”), and artists are given up to $50,000 in funding, as well as a suite of career development services valued at up to $45,000.

Among the winners are Los Angeles-based artist Liz Glynn, whose installation Gol[den] is based in a foreclosed home in rural California that will be turned into a site for durational performances that explore “the fading myth of economic mobility;” Ligia Bouton, Matt Donovan, and Lei Liang, who have collaborated on Inheritance, a multimedia chamber opera based on the life of a gun heiress; and Joseph Keckler, whose durational performance Let Me Die will enact famous operatic demises.

This year marks the departure of president and executive director Ruby Lerner, who has been in charge of the nonprofit since its inception in 1999. Since then, Creative Capital has awarded over $35 million to approximately 465 projects produced by 579 artists.

Previous award winners include artist Theaster GatesMacArthur fellow LaToya Ruby Frazier, and filmmaker Laura Poitras.

Here is the full list of artists awarded grants this year, which includes a diverse group: 50% are people of color, and 52% percent are women.

LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs.Image: Courtesy of www.poetryfoundation.org.

LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs.
Image: Courtesy of poetryfoundation.org.

Literature:
Jesse Ball
desveladas (Macarena Hernandez, Sheila Maldonado, Nelly Rosario)
LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs
Percival Everett
Eileen Myles
Dao Strom

Carmelita Tropicana.Image: Courtesy of Wikipedia.

Carmelita Tropicana.
Image: Courtesy of Wikipedia.

Performing Arts:
Cornell Alston and Kaneza Schaal
Jeff Becker
Peter Born and Okwui Okpokwasili
Ligia Bouton, Matt Donovan and Lei Liang
Sharon Bridgforth
Ben Thorp Brown
Ann Carlson
Mallory Catlett
Ellen Sebastian Chang and Amara Tabor-Smith
Jim Findlay
Robin Frohardt
Sean Graney
Brian Harnetty
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and Carmelita Tropicana
Joseph Keckler
Heather Kravas
Ahamefule J. Oluo
Pegasus Warning (Guillermo Brown)
Graham Reynolds
Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble (Tei Blow and Sean McElroy)
James Scruggs
Erika Chong Shuch
Yara Travieso

Kenya (Robinson), CHEEKY LaSHAE + The Red Bath Mat, (2014-15). Image: Courtesy of the artist/Rema Hort Mann Foundation.

Kenya (Robinson), CHEEKY LaSHAE + The Red Bath Mat (2014-15).
Image: Courtesy of the artist, who is also a Rema Hort Mann Foundation grantee.

Emerging Fields:
Tanya Aguiniga
Zach Blas
Peter Burr and Porpentine
Melanie Crean, Shaun Leonardo and Sable Smith
Desert ArtLAB (April Bojorquez and Matthew Garcia)
Heather Dewey-Hagborg
Liz Glynn
Heather Hart and Jina Valentine
Marisa Morán Jahn
KCHUNG (Luke Fischbeck, Margie Schnibbe and Evan Walsh)
Yotam Mann
Eva Mattes and Franco Mattes
Irvin Morazan
Laura Parnes
Kenya (Robinson)
Evan Roth
Chris E. Vargas


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