The Idea Fund 2021 Grantees Announced

The Idea Fund, a re-granting program administered by DiverseWorks, Aurora Picture Show, and Project Row Houses and funded by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, has announced the selection of 12 projects by Houston-based artists to receive $5,000 each for The Idea Fund's Round 14 (2021) grant cycle. Round 14 Grantees will present their projects to the public at the 2021 Virtual Idea Fund Award Reception, hosted online by Aurora Picture Show, on Feb 9, 2021, 7:00 PM CDT.

Round 14 grant recipients are as follows: Qais Assali; Banke Awopetu (and collaborators: Asha Black, Blu J, Sha'Na Lynnette Smith, and Arnea Williams); Gregory Michael Carter; Sol Diaz; Matthew Flores & Ángel Lartigue; The Hueston Collective (Aisen Caro Chacin, Violette Bule, Felicia Chapman, Maria Macias, Lindsay Betzabeth Nunez, and Josef Pierre); Vinod Hopson; Yu-Ru Huang; Bria Lauren; Henry G. Sanchez; Prince Varughese Thomas & Britt Thomas; and Two Dykes and a Knife (Lovie Olivia & Preetika Rajgariah).

The Idea Fund's mission is to support artist-generated or artist-centered projects that exemplify unconventional, interventionist, conceptual, entrepreneurial, participatory, or guerrilla artistic practices with an emphasis on cultural and social equity. Round 14 saw a diverse pool of applicants from five Houston-area counties - Austin, Fort Bend, Galveston, Harris, and Montgomery.

Of the 12 projects, 24 artists will be supported by Round 14 with 96% self-identifying as being a person of color, 37% as female, 13% as non-binary/gender non-conforming, 30% as LGBTQIAP+, and 88% as first-time grantees. A total of $60,000 will be distributed to 7 individual artists and 5 collectives selected from 106 eligible applicants by a three-member multidisciplinary panel composed of experts from the field.

Round 14 was juried by Roya Amirsoleymani, Artistic Director & Curator of Public Engagement, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Portland, OR, Leslie Moody Castro, Independent Curator, Houston & Mexico City, and Harrison Guy, Director of Arts and Culture for the 5th Ward Community Redevelopment Corporation and 2019 Idea Fund recipient.

For more on Round 14 Jurors and the 2021 Virtual Award Reception please visit www.theideafund.org.

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