Laundromat Project Names 2022 ‘Create Change’ Artists and Fellows

The Brooklyn-based arts nonprofit the Laundromat Project has announced the 16 participants in its annual Create Change Artist Development Program, which is split into a Create Change Artist-in-Residence category as well as another for Create Change Fellows.

The artists in residence receive $20,000 in funding to collaborate with local partners in various New York City communities, while the fellows receive a stipend to create community-engaged programming over a six-month period. Both the residents and the fellows will have access to cultural organizing and community building strategy workshops with instruction from Ebony Noelle Golden (Betty’s Daughter Arts Collaborative), Urban Bush Women, Fernanda Espinosa, and Laundromat Project staff, among others.

In a statement, Kemi Ilesanmi, the Laundromat Project’s executive director,  said, “The Laundromat Project has a long history of working with artists and cultural producers to strengthen their creative practice while building stronger relationships between neighbors. As communities all across the city are able to reconvene and reconnect after so much isolation the past two years, we could not be more eager to support and empower artists and creative problem solvers, whose role in the resilience of NYC remains essential.”

[The Laundromat Project was selected as a 2022 Decider by guest editor Hank Willis Thomas.]

This year’s cohort was selected by the organization’s 2022 Artist & Community Council, which includes artists Prerana Reddy and Bianca Mońa as well as Anthony Buissereth, executive director of the community planning nonprofit North Brooklyn Neighbors.

The four Create Change artists-in-residence will focus on specific program-based projects. Jamel Burgess will work on an archival project to produce an accessible digital platform that includes oral histories called “Archiving East New York.” For “Reclaiming Realities,” Ibi Ibrahim will undertake a photo and oral history project about Yemeni American bodega owners across the city. In Bedford-Stuyvesant, Kendra J. Ross will work on “The Sankofa Residency,” a collaborative project on the neighborhood’s history and an Afrofuturist imagining of what comes next for Bed-Stuy. For “Reflective Urbanisms: Mapping NY Chinatown,” Cheryl Wing-Zi Wong will create a storytelling project on Manhattan’s Chinatown.

The full list of Create Change Fellows follows below.

Kyra Assibey Bonsu
Community development, oral storytelling, writing, event production | Crown Heights, Brooklyn

Jessica Cortez
Applied theater | Crown Heights, Brooklyn

Jing Dong
Theater, socially engaged art, education | Lower East Side, Manhattan

Brianna Harlan
Multidisciplinary art, community organizing | Astoria, Queens

Madjeen Isaac
Painting | Flatbush, Brooklyn

Maya K. Jeffereis
Visual art, education | Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn

Walis Johnson
Social practice, documentary film | Clinton Hill, Brookly

Shari Jones
Multi-dimensional practice | Fort Greene, Brooklyn

Duneska Suannette Michel
Social practice, visual art, sound, community organizing, education | Brooklyn

Mon M.
Community and collaborative art | Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn

Emmanuel Oni
Community design, and architecture | Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn

Natalia Guzmán Solano
Activism, scholarship, artivism | East Elmhurst, Queens

Source: artnews.com