The U.S. Latinx Art Forum to offer 15 additional visual artists unrestricted $50,000 awards

(MEDFORD, MA – May 31, 2023) The U.S. Latinx Art Forum (USLAF) today announced the newest cohort of the Latinx Artist Fellowship. In its third year, the fellowship annually recognizes 15 of the most compelling Latinx visual artists working in the United States today and aims to address a systemic lack of support, visibility, and patronage of Latinx visual artists—individuals of Latin American or Caribbean descent, born or long-living in the United States.

The Latinx Artist Fellowship marks the largest of USLAF’s initiatives to provide direct support to artists, which also include micro-grant programs such as the Artist Mentorship Program, which launched in 2022, and the Charla Fund and Chispa, which provided pandemic relief funds to BIPOC artists. Founded in 2015, USLAF is the only national organization exclusively dedicated to Latinx visual art and art history. USLAF first gained national recognition for initiatives that draw attention to inequities in the field, using data collection to examine Latinx art representation in graduate programs, faculty, exhibitions, and academic conferences.

The 2023 Latinx Art Fellowship class was chosen to reflect the the Latinx community’s diversity, highlighting the practices of women-identified, queer, and nonbinary artists, as well as those from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds, ranging from Chicanx and El Salvadoran to Dominican-American, Afro-Latinx, and Indigenous-identified. The cohort includes artists working in locations such as Tempe, Arizona; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Hato Rey, Puerto Rico; and Houston, Texas, while the the cohort’s artistic practices span ceramics, painting, printmaking, photography, installation art, sound art, social practice, and performance, as well as site responsive architectural interventions. Deliberately intergenerational, it is equally divided between emerging, midcareer, and established artists.

The 2023 Latinx Fellows are:

A jury of curators at partner organizations, current fellows, and arts practitioners selected the cohort from more than 200 nominees recommended by invited external nominators with Latinx art expertise. The jurors include: Rodrigo Moura (chief curator, El Museo del Barrio), Mari Carmen Ramírez (Wortham Curator of Latin American Art and Director, International Center for the Arts of the Americas, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston), Marianne Ramirez Aponte (executive director and chief curator, MAC Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico), Maria Gaspar (interdisciplinary artist based in Chicago, IL), Lucia Hierro (sculpture and installation artist based in New York, NY), Consuelo Jimenez Underwood (contemporary fiber artist based in Gualala, CA), and Josie Lopez (head curator, Albuquerque Museum).

“USLAF is thrilled to announce the newest cohort of Latinx artist fellows. Like our first two cohorts, these 15 extraordinary artists embody the originality and talent that abound within the Latinx artistic community,” said Adriana Zavala, PhD, executive director, U.S. Latinx Art Forum. “We congratulate them, and we are grateful to Mellon and Ford for their partnership and support of our work to uplift Latinx visual artists.”

“As the Latinx Artist Fellowship marks its third year, this cohort of artists speaks to the wide range of aesthetic strategies, conceptual practices, and subject matter that position Latinx artists as vital and significant voices within contemporary art,” said Mary Thomas, PhD, director of programs, U.S. Latinx Art Forum. “USLAF is excited to continue our work to support artists and welcome this new cohort of fellows.”

“USLAF is honored to announce this year’s award recipients who represent the diverse range of identities and backgrounds within the Latinx community throughout the United States and in Puerto Rico,” said Michelle Ruiz, program coordinator, U.S. Latinx Art Forum. “We celebrate their contributions to the art world and look forward to highlighting their practices on a national stage in collaboration with our institutional partners through the ‘X as intersection’ series of public programs.”

This first-of-its-kind initiative launched in 2021, with a combined commitment of $5 million from the Mellon Foundation and the Ford Foundation who provided $50,000 in unrestricted funds to each of 75 Latinx visual artists through 2025. The fellowship is also administered in collaboration with the New York Foundation for the Arts. The Fellowship is part of the Latinx Art Visibility Initiative, which is led by the Mellon Foundation and the Ford Foundation. The three-part initiative recently announced Advancing Latinx Art in Museums (ALAM), which will provide grants of $500,000 to 10 institutions in support of the creation and formalization of 10 permanent early and mid-career curatorial positions with Latinx art expertise.

Despite contributing to American art for more than a century, Latinx artists have been consistently marginalized within American art history. Though Latinx people account for nearly 20% of the total U.S. population and represent the largest ethnic group in many regions across the country, Latinx causes and organizations traditionally receive less than 2% of philanthropic funding, while annual funding for Latinx arts and culture has declined 35% annually since 2013, dropping from $39 million to $13 million.

The Fellowship, and the greater Latinx Art Visibility Initiative, is a long overdue opportunity to lift up Latinx artists and to provide financial support to expand and secure their place within American art and art history.

For more information on the Latinx Artist Fellowship, visit https://uslaf.org/latinx-artist-fellowship-2023/

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About US Latinx Art Forum

Since 2015, the U.S. Latinx Art Forum (USLAF) has supported the creation of a more equitable art world by championing artists and arts professionals dedicated to Latinx art through research, studio practice, pedagogy, and writing. USLAF generates and supports initiatives that benefit an intergenerational network of over 800 members and advances the vitality of Latinx art within academia, art institutions, and collections. Past initiatives have included data collection to track the growth of Latinx art history in academia, which in turn fueled advocacy efforts for greater representation of Latinx art; a closed-door convening with stakeholders to understand the urgent issues facing Latinx artists and cultural workers; and the Mazorca Initiative, a micro-grant program launched in response to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing threats to justice caused by systemic racism and xenophobia.

Press Contacts

Mary Thomas
[email protected]
Director of Programs
US Latinx Art Forum