En Foco is proud to announce the ten Fellowship winners of its 2017 Photography Fellowship Program who were selected from a pool of 108 applicants. The winners each receive an award of $1,000; participate in the 2017 Fellowship Group Exhibition (opening May 19th at the Andrew Freedman Home); are featured in En Foco’s Nueva Luz publication, in printed and online editions; and are provided professional development and networking opportunities. The Fellowship initiative affirms and demonstrates En Foco’s ongoing commitment to the financial support of artists of color.
En Foco’s 2017 Photography Fellowship winners are Cinthya Santos Briones, Santana Copeland, Lisa DuBois, Daesha Devon Harris, Rhea Karam, Daniel Martinez, Erika Morillo, Jonathan Santiago, Byron Smith, and Nichole Washington. The Fellowship winners selected are based exclusively on the excellence and quality of the work submitted. All work is reviewed by panelists who are all distinguished members of the arts community: Amy Chin, Special Advisor for Cultural Initiatives at Chinatown Partnership; Sabrina Cedeño, Membership Associate at Fractured Atlas; and Stephanie Baptist, independent curator, producer, and editor. This year’s Fellowship exhibition will be curated by Gabriel de Guzman, Curator of Visual Arts from Wave Hill. Stephanie Baptist will curate the special issue of Nueva Luz.
Cinthya Santos Briones‘ series, Abuelas: Portraits of the Invisible Grandmothers, honors the culture and experiences of undocumented Mexican grandmothers, while exploring the women’s relationships with their environments and their identities.
Santana Copeland‘s series, BlackWhiteColor, deconstructs the complex urban landscape and reduces the banality of overlooked buildings, electric wiring, and scaffolding to their parts and in doing so offers abstract perspectives on urbanity.
Lisa DuBois‘ series, Holy Water, is a visual comparison of the spiritual significance of water in ritual practices, across different faiths and religions in Eastern and Western cultures.
Daesha Devon Harris‘ series, Just Beyond the River, uses the visual language of Negro folklore along with personal and cultural histories to re-examine the current and historical discourse on race and the ongoing struggle for freedom.
Rhea Karam‘s series, Déraciné (Uprooted), uses the image of trees from New York in urban landscapes that lack green spaces in Lebanon to challenge the contemporary ideas of placement and identity.
Daniel Martinez‘s series, A Gated Community, is an exploration of home. For Martinez, this project documents, represents, and presents the people, places, and experiences that make the Bronx home.
Erika Morillo‘s series, Umbral, seeks to find the balance between the idealized version of childhood that adulthood offers and the realities we offer our own children.
Jonathan Santiago is a documentary photographer concerned with familial and geopolitical identities in his home borough of the Bronx. He is also working on a concurrent project documenting climate change migrants in the south of Bangladesh.
Byron Smith‘s series, Mosul Offensive 2016, is a photographic quest to document and understand the consequences of a U.S.-backed war between the Iraqi Army and ISIS, for civilians in Mosul, Iraq.
Nichole Washington‘s series, For My Girls, is a celebration of the intersection of black womanhood and the female energies of 90s Hip-hop. For My Girls is a call for sisterhood and empowerment.
Exhibition Location: The exhibition opens on May 19, 2017 at the Andrew Freedman Home at 1125 Grand Concourse, Bronx, NY 10452. Phone: 718-588-8200.
For additional information on the exhibition and Nueva Luz, visit enfoco.org.
