On January 12, 2022, Creative Capital named their 50 new Creative Capital Awardees, which includes two ACT alumni – Suneil Sanzgiri (SMACT ’17) and Alia Farid (SMVisS ‘08). The grants will fund the creation of innovative new projects by individual artists working in the performing arts, visual arts, film, technology, literature, and socially engaged and multidisciplinary practices.
About the projects:
Suneil Sanzgiri, Two Refusals
Two Refusals is a feature-length experimental essay film that looks to sites of refusal, rejection, and revolt across India and Africa. Weaving together personal reflections on the artist’s family history as freedom fighters against the occupying Portuguese forces in Goa with stories of liberation and resistance across the Goan diaspora, such as the story of Sita Valles—the fierce Angolan-born Goan revolutionary—the film focuses on the bonds of solidarity that developed across the two continents against the Portuguese Empire. A personal journey through ancestry, anti-colonialism, and harbingers of dissent across India and Africa, inspired from the myths of Portugal’s “oldest work of epic poetry,” The Lusiads, the work repositions key mythological figures to ask how one can refuse an empire.
For this film Sanzgiri has also received funding from the Jerome Foundation, NYSCA and will be working with the production unit Field of Vision.
Alia Farid, Migration of Forms (Working Title)
Migration of Forms (Working Title) is a social practice project and ever-expanding tapestry that traces the history of Arab, South Asian, and African migration to Latin America and the Caribbean. Based on dialogue with diaspora communities and the examination of their own environments and architecture, Farid conjures a landscape of transnational spaces. The large-scale tapestry composed of smaller tapestries is based on images supplied by members of the community of spaces where their identity and heritage is formed and sustained. These images travel to weaving workshops amongst origin communities where Farid works with weavers, using this material as a point of departure to translate the information into a woven piece. Much like her own heritage, Farid’s work brings sites in relation with each other creating a transregionalism that belies national boundaries drawn on land.
About the Creative Capital Awards:
Each project will receive varying amounts up to $50,000 in direct funding, supplemented by career development and networking services to foster thriving artistic careers totaling up to $2.5 million in artist support.
Aliza Shvarts, Creative Capital Director of Artist Initiatives, said that “the selected projects critically and creatively address some of the most pressing issues of our moment, as well as painful historical legacies that continue to shape our present— from abortion, to money laundering in the art world, to the mass graves from the convict leasing program, to the lasting imprint colonization has left on the construct of time zones. These artists demonstrate, with urgency and power, the many ways creative practice not only engages the world, but endeavors to shape it.”
