YoungArts 2021-22 Annual Report

Kashvi Ramani (2022 Theater, Writing) took advantage of all the opportunities possible. In addition to participating in National YoungArts Week+, in March 2022 Ramani attended Process Intensive, a three-day, virtual, multidisciplinary workshop led by Darren Biggart, Torya Beard, Ayodele Casel and Peter Lerman that explored how artists balance collaboration and individual creativity. Ramani was also featured in the 2022 Honorable Mention & Merit Anthology + Catalogue and performed in the virtual public celebration on May 10 with her own piece, “Dodda in a Day,” along with supporting her fellow artists by volunteering as an actor in a peer’s screenplay performance.

One such artist, Stella Lei (2022 Writing), was named a YoungArts finalist, and following her participation in National YoungArts Week+, was selected for the Lin Arison Excellence in Writing Award, a $50,000 scholarship that the recipient can use to attend a college or university of their choice. Lei was chosen for this award by the National Selection Panel for Writing including Christopher Castellani (1990, 1992 Writing), who praised her “sophistication rarely found among writers at any age.” Lei also was named a U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts in May 2022 along with 19 other YoungArts award winners. This honor is only available to YoungArts award winners at the Finalist level.

Sherwin was also selected as a reviewer for YoungArts’ Miami Film Festival Curatorial Residency, a program that offers young artists an unparalleled opportunity to work directly with festival leadership and support the film review process. As part of this program, Sherwin reviewed 10 films, presenting his recommendations at the festival in March 2022. Of the experience, Sherwin shared “The film festival was absolutely fantastic! It was my first experience being at a film festival as someone part of the staff/industry side, and getting to spend more time with Jaie [Laplante] and the MFF staff was just so special. I also got to hang out and talk a lot with the composer Cristobal Tapia de Veer, who was being honored, and learned so much! They were all very encouraging!”

Banbury, along with seven other artists, also participated in the pilot year of YoungArts’ Emerging Professional Artists Mentorship Program, which connects artists with mentors who provide advice and guidance in their chosen field and within the broader arts ecology. The influence that this program can have on careers is significant: following the program Banbury was recommended for a residency at Looking Glass Arts by his mentor Marika Hughes.

Juan Jose Cielo (2015 Visual Arts) creates paintings, photographs and short films that grapple with the reality of the Latinx experience in the U.S. by using Latin American myth and folklore to envision a futuristic world. In recognition of his thought-provoking and insightful work, Cielo was selected as the recipient of the 2022 Jorge M. Pérez Award, an annual $25,000 unrestricted prize funded by The Jorge M. Pérez Family Foundation through The Miami Foundation.

In addition to the Jorge M. Pérez Award, YoungArts offers financial support ranging from microgrants to $25,000 unrestricted artist awards.

For YoungArts’ spring exhibition, an installation titled Home: Reimagining Interiority, multi-disciplinary artist Cornelius Tulloch (2016 Design Arts, Visual Arts & U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts) submitted work created during the first month of the COVID-19 pandemic that uncovers the blurred intersection of dreams and reality that we experience in isolation. Co-curated by Dr. Deborah Willis and Dr. Joan Morgan, both directors at the NYU Institute of African American Affairs, Center for Black Visual Culture, the exhibition utilized photographic and text-based artwork to explore—against the backdrop of a global pandemic—the significant ways Black visual narratives respond to the dynamic cultural, political, social, economic and intimate changes that have forced us to (re)interrogate previous conceptions of Blackness and home. The exhibition traveled to New York University.

As a YoungArts Artist Fellow, composer and performer Molly Joyce (2010 Classical Music) had the opportunity to expand on her work Left and Right, a performance collaboration with dancer Jerron Herman and director Austin Regan exploring the traditionally cursed and dark left side of the body and its relationship to the healing and beneficent right side. Joyce convened her collaborators in Omaha, Nebraska for a multiweek residency at the Bemis Center to workshop the piece in advance of its premiere at National Sawdust in summer 2022. Through the YoungArts fellowship, Joyce attended the National Performance Network’s annual conference (held virtually) to pitch her work to presenters, attend workshops and participate in discussions.

New in 2021-22, the YoungArts Artist Fellowship offers a full year of sustained creative support to two artists from performing arts fields. An evolution from YoungArts’ three-week residency initiative, this program provides artists the space, time and resources needed to prioritize deeper engagement with their work.

Roopa Mahadevan (2001 Dance) is an Indian classical vocalist and crossover artist known for her powerful, emotive voice, versatility and collaborative spirit. During the 2021-22 season, she was one of four YoungArts award winners who performed at Joe’s Pub at The Public Theater in New York through a YoungArts partnership. On April 24, 2022, Mahadevan sang pieces with guest artists from her crossover project Roopa in Flux for a sold-out room and received a standing ovation for the exhilarating performance. Offering opportunities like this to share space with collaborators and perform for new audiences on a renowned stage is just one way YoungArts supports the more established artists in the YoungArts winner community.

Following her performances at Joe’s Pub, Mahadevan supported YoungArts by serving on the panel to select the 2023 YoungArts Artist Fellows.

Between August 21 and September 4, 2021, dancer and choreographer Shamel Pitts (2003 Dance) convened a group of dancers at Miami Light Project with the support of YoungArts and Miami Light Project to workshop Touch of RED, a piece that explores the allowance of Black men to soften, the power in vulnerability and the meeting point of two individuals, where the boxing ring is reimagined from a space of duels to one of duets. This technical residency was a continuation of YoungArts’ support of the project that began in 2020 with a YoungArts-supported creation residency at New York Live Arts.

Through a 2020 NPN Creation Fund Grant, the work attracted a prestigious group of co-commissioners including Jacob’s Pillow, CAP UCLA, Miami Light Project, New York Live Arts and Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago who committed to presenting Touch of RED in 2022 and 2023. The piece premiered at MASS MoCA in North Adams, MA in partnership with Jacob’s Pillow in October 2022, and had its Florida premiere at Miami Theater Center in November 2022.

During the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Jennifer Koh (1994 Classical Music & U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts) launched Alone Together, a project to support young composers as they faced hardship. The project offered monetary support for young creative professionals as well as moments of shared experience and community, both within the classical music network and beyond.

Koh, with YoungArts’ support, created an album inspired by this project and on April 3, 2022, she received the Best Instrumental Solo Grammy Award for the piece. YoungArts is proud to have been a commissioning partner for Alone Together.

One such YoungArts winner is acclaimed jazz saxophonist and bandleader Javon Jackson (1983 Jazz). In addition to serving as Jazz National Selection Panel Chair, Jackson led 13 YoungArts award winners in Jazz and Writing through a workshop with award-winning poet, writer and activist Nikki Giovanni.

Modeled on their recently released album The Gospel According to Nikki Giovanni, Jackson and Giovanni led four 60-minute virtual sessions that created space for the potential that arises from deep listening between artists working in different artforms. Giving feedback and using personal examples from their storied careers, Jackson and Giovanni fostered an atmosphere of experimentation and collaboration, focusing on process rather than final product.