May 23, 2019
The Wexner Center for the Arts, the multidisciplinary contemporary art laboratory at The Ohio State University, is delighted to announce the beneficiaries of its annual Artist Residency Awards for 2019–20.
The Wex invests over USD 200,000 each year in the creation of new work across the program areas of film/video, performing arts, and visual arts. Chosen by the center’s curators and director, each recipient exemplifies the spirit of innovation and exploration that is central to the mission of the Wexner Center and Ohio State.
Along with financial support comes a level of freedom to determine how the award will be used and access to the technical, professional, and creative capital of the Wex and Ohio State. By accepting the award, artists agree to support the Wex’s function as a teaching space by sharing their processes and experiences with students.
The recipients for 2019–20:
Film/Video: Various filmmakers | Cinetracts ‘20
In 1968, a group of French filmmakers crafted cinematic responses to the political and social upheaval that shook Paris in May of that year. Inspired by this project, called Cinétracts, the Wex is commissioning 20 short films by an international selection of 20 filmmakers, including Tony Buba, Charles Burnett, Tamer El Said, Su Friedrich, Kelly Gallagher, Christopher Harris, Sky Hopinka, Gabriel Mascaro, Rosine Mbakam, Sheilah and Dani ReStack, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
Each filmmaker will create a work in response to the current sociopolitical climate. Like the original Cinétracts project, participating filmmakers will work within a set of guidelines that includes a running time of two minutes or less, a one-day production schedule, and an explicit reference within the film to the date and geographic location.
The Wex will screen the works in fall 2020 and host a panel discussion with some of the participants before sharing the films with other venues and eventually online.
Visual Arts: Alex Da Corte
Philadelphia-based Alex Da Corte employs sources across a spectrum of high and low culture, good and bad taste, for his evocative, neon-lit installations, videos, sculptures, and two-dimensional work.
Often using replicas and copies, Da Corte draws inspiration from infamous monsters and villains; cartoons, celebrities, and pop culture icons; and marginalized, invisible, or overlooked subjects. He inserts these figures into unfamiliar contexts and in doing so, reanimates their place in our collective consciousness. Queer, daft, and outlandish, as well as sensual and empathetic, Da Corte’s work encourages openness to how we perceive and connect to the world around us.
For his Artist Residency Award project, Da Corte will conduct research at Ohio State’s Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum to create new work for a gallery exhibition at the Wex in summer 2020.
Performing Arts: Sharon Udoh
A central Ohio treasure, singer, keyboardist, and songwriter Sharon Udoh combines vocals that seemingly erupt from the center of the earth with a stage presence that somehow feels both dangerous and kind.
With her rock ‘n’ roll group, Counterfeit Madison, Udoh has released two albums and created the 2017 performance Counterfeit Madison Meets Nina Simone: A Celebration of Blackness. The Wex hosted a sold-out release party for the band’s most recent album, 2017’s Opposable Thumbs, and her appearance in another Wex-supported project—a theatrical version of Joan Didion’s “The White Album” by director Lars Jan—showcased her talent at such venues as the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA.
Udoh’s residency work will incorporate several elements, including a release party for Counterfeit Madison’s upcoming album and an Aretha Franklin tribute concert, created in collaboration with Columbus performer DJ Moxy. She’ll also curate a music bill for performances by choreographer and dancer nora chipaumire at the Wex in fall 2019.
