HADI FALLAHPISHEH AND DEVIN N. MORRIS WIN NEW YORK ARTADIA AWARDS
Artadia announced today that Hadi Fallahpisheh and Devin N. Morris have been selected as the winners of the 2019 New York Artadia Awards, which recognize artists who have lived or worked in the city for a period of at least two years. The artists will receive $10,000 in unrestricted funds as well as access to the nonprofit’s resources and network.
Born in Tehran in 1987, Fallahpisheh works primarily with photography, in addition to with performance and installation. A Bard College graduate, he often comments on conditions of displacement and the difference between personal experience and public perception in his work. Morris, a Baltimore-born, Brooklyn-based artist, is known for his exploration of sexual and racial identity in his mixed-media paintings, photographs, writings, and videos.
In the first round of jurying, Kate Fowle, chief curator at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, and director at large of Independent Curators International, New York; artist Mickalene Thomas; and Sohrab Mohebbi, curator at SculptureCenter, New York, selected five finalists. Justine Ludwig, executive director of Creative Time, joined Artadia for the second round of evaluations. The shortlisted artists also included Erick A. Hernandez, Sable Elyse Smith, and Sasha Wortzel.
“With more than five hundred artists applying for the award, it was no mean feat to arrive at a collective agreement on five with whom to do studio visits: so many incredible ideas and approaches to discern between,” Fowle and Ludwig said in a statement. “Devin, Erick, Hadi, Sable Elyse, and Sasha were all inspiring and thought provoking in their practices. Each is honing an approach to art-making that is unfamiliar in the ‘I haven’t seen anything quite like this’ way. The work is socially conscious and intense; personal, resourceful, and generative. They each offer a strong, unique, and uncompromising creative vision, leaving us with the impossible task of having to compare radically different outputs.”
In an unprecedented move, Fowle and Ludwig had tried to negotiate for more funding from Artadia so that they could name all five finalists awardees this year. They said: “Note to any interested philanthropists out there: Artadia rocks! Support them, so they can support more artists.” When they were unable to secure more funds, they chose Fallahpisheh and Morris as the honorees.
Since 1999, Artadia has awarded over $5 million to 331 artists in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco.
