Rik Freeman
Mr.
Freeman will execute a series of paintings based on the subject matter of
African American beaches during segregation and Jim Crow. The series will
focus on the Eastern seaboard, featuring the communities of Chicken Bone
Beach, Atlantic City, NJ; Highland Beach, MD (founded by Charles Douglass,
son of Fredrick Douglass); Ocean Beach, and Wrightsville Beach, NC. The
paintings will be from the late 19th century through the mid-1960s.
The
subject will contain beach life, founders, families and get-togethers, and
entertainment. Many locals had venues for dancing, dinners, celebrations,
and concerts. They were on the "Chitlin Circuit," and many black
performers stayed there as Jim Crow laws prohibited them from
accommodations in all White areas. The racial strife and inequities that
caused the formation of the beaches will be included. Each canvas will
focus separately on each community.
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HONFLEUR WOMEN IN
ARTS PROGRAM
Grants
are given to individuals or collaboratives who propose a project that
focuses on the impact that being a woman [or identifying as a woman] has
had in pursuing creative endeavors. For 2023, the following artists were
granted awards:
Awungjia (Gia)
Foretia
To
produce a film, BLIND JUSTICE, a narrative drama that centers around a
teenage girl afflicted with glaucoma who must work out of the
crime-infested neighborhoods of Washington, DC, to pursue her dream of
becoming a writer. Blind Justice is the first short film for this writer,
producer, executive producer, and actor. Foretia was inspired to write this
short film to highlight the struggles that female minority children face as
they strive to achieve success outside their parents' traditional career
path expectations.
Marta Staudinger
The project will
include a research component and an exhibition. First, the project will
select five local women-identifying artists/arts workers to participate who
come from different socio-economic backgrounds and who work in various
media. Staudinger will interview them and collect data as a field study
focusing on how they have felt discriminated against by artworld systems in
the past, their current needs, and how they imagine art spaces and art
publics can hold in the future. The selected women would then create a
response to the interview, which could be in the form of audio, video,
visual art, poetry, or other forms of expression. Staudinger will then
curate an exhibition at Honfleur Gallery with audio excerpts from the
interviews, their call and response work, and/or visuals of data tracking.
Zsudayka Nzinga
The
project, "Infinity Program," will target eight underrepresented
African American women artists, ages 18 to 30, interested in progressing
their artistic careers. With an emphasis on artwork that tells Black
stories, the program empowers artists by providing creative support,
business support, and an opportunity to highlight their work and create
future opportunities and relationships. Artists will gain essential tools
to navigate the visual art scene. They will get direct opportunities to
establish a business practice around their art and be encouraged to explore
their creative process and form kinship amongst upcoming industry peers.
Nzinga's project will result in an exhibition at Honfleur Gallery in FY
2024.
Amelie Haden
The project will focus on
the stereotypes and expectations that are put on all genders. The concept
for Haden's project formed after seeing Salvador Dali's 1936 The Anthropomorphic Cabinet (1936,
1979) and his Venus
de Milo with Drawer (1939) sculpture. While at the Corcoran
College of Art & Design, Haden took a wood sculpture class where she
was the only woman, and students questioned her being there. For her final
project, she came to the professor with a design that focused on the female
anatomy and would force the viewer to confront it. The professor told her
it would take too long to execute her plan, and Haden produced the male
version, which was half as much work. She created her piece lovingly called
Family Jewels.
Over time, she realized she needed to make the companion piece for Family Jewels.
There was a need to discuss gender stereotypes and how they shape
relationships with our bodies and those of the other sex. The creation of
the female version of this piece would play on stereotypes of the female
body and would be a compelling juxtaposition between how male and female
bodies are viewed. Viewers engaging with the two pieces would be forced to
face their biases about human anatomy and how it should be displayed and
interacted with. She will also create three to four other works, resulting
in an exhibition at Honfleur in FY2024.
The
Other You
An independent feature film written by Julie Gold, directed
by Shoshana Rosenbaum, and produced by Robin Noonan-Price, a District of
Columbia-based women's collective whose goal is to build their careers and
increase the visibility of the nascent D.C.-area fiction film industry.
Phyllicia Hatton
Will publish a book,
"Captivated: Fearfully, Wonderfully Made!” which will be a Compilation
of Women Visual Artists. Hatton's work will highlight and "educate the
public about women who have long been underrepresented in the national
narrative'."
BREathe Dance Project
"Origin" is a
choreographic installment that explores the interlacing patterns between
trauma and kinesthetic response. What does the body look like, internally
and externally, when trauma begins? Research has proven that trauma can be
an acute incident of extreme suffering or a prolonged culmination of
cyclical moments of pain and stress. And while the human body has
unfortunately become accustomed to existing within and healing from the
matrix of traumatic
experiences, the
existential question remains "Can we really ever experience joy in its
purest form?" Through this work, the dance company hopes to highlight
how the psyche and body respond throughout the cycle of trauma- exploring
themes such as anxiety, suffocation, coping mechanisms, and healing. In
some ways, this work will dive deeply into the five cycles of grief from an
internal perspective rather than through an external experience.
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