Artadia Announces The 2018 Houston Artadia Awardees And Chicago Finalists

Artadia announces the Awardees for the 2018 Houston Artadia Awards: Francis Almendarez and Dana Frankfort. As the 2018 Houston Artadia Awardees, Almendarez and Frankfort will receive $10,000 in unrestricted funds as well as access to the ongoing benefits of the Artadia Awards program.

In the first round of jurying, Huma Bhabha, Artist; Dean Daderko, Curator, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, and Claire D'Alba, Curator, Art in Embassies (personal capacity) selected five Finalists: Francis Almendarez, Rabea Ballin, Natasha Bowdoin, Dana Frankfort, and Angel Oloshove. Kanitra Fletcher, Curatorial Assistant, Modern and Contemporary Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, joined Daderko for the second round of evaluations. The jurors conducted studio visits with the five Finalists to determine the Awardees.

The jurors praised the practice and commitment of each Awardee: "Dana Frankfort's dedication to process, formal experimentation, and the depths and pleasures of color animate a body of paintings in which she explores the legibility, visual potency, and dissolution of written words."

"In Almendarez's inspired and ambitious multi-channel video installation works, we were moved by investigations of memory and history evident in thoughtful manipulations of mood, and temporal and physical distance. We look forward to following the development of their promising practices."

The 2018 Houston Artadia Awards are generously supported by The Brown Foundation, the Houston Endowment, Artadia Houston Council members, and Artadia's Board of Directors.

Artadia also announces the five Finalists for the 2018 Chicago Awards: Bethany Collins, Daniel Eisenberg, Brendan Fernandes, Leonard Suryajaya, and Derrick Woods-Murrow. The Finalists will receive studio visits with second round jurors, who will ultimately select two artists as Awardees to receive $10,000 in unrestricted funds.

The Finalists were selected by jurors Darby English, Consulting Curator, the Museum of Modern Art; Carl Darling Buck Professor of Art History, College Modern and Contemporary Art, Cultural Studies, UChicago; Courtenay Finn, Curator, Aspen Art Museum; and Jamie Isenstein, artist.

Finn praised the criticality and breadth of work from the Chicago applicant pool. Nearly 300 artists, across every discipline, living across city submitted applications. "Artadia continues to not just actively and crucially support, but also bring to light the exciting and groundbreaking practices of artists working across the US. As part of the 2018 Chicago jury, I was taken aback by the strength of submissions, the experimentation in media, and the thoughtfulness and nuance in storytelling and subject matter. Now more than ever, we need artists' voices and if the pool of artists seen through the 2018 Chicago Artadia Awards is indicative of where artists are going, I could not be more excited to follow their lead. We are in for hard conversations, generous gestures, and a breath of new ways of thinking and looking at the world around us."

The 2018 Chicago Artadia Awards are generously supported by individual donors across the country, Chicago Council members, and Artadia's Board of Directors.

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