Puerto Rican artist Edra Soto win the 2016 Efroymson Contemporary Arts Fellowship

Edra Soto, Relocating Techniques, 2016, Installation
Wood, books, records, pictures, memorabilia

Chicago - The Efroymson Family Fund, a donor-advised fund of the CICF, announced the recipients of the 2016 Efroymson Contemporary Arts Fellowship. In the past 10 years, the Efroymson Family Fund has awarded 50 fellowships totaling more than $1,000,000 to contemporary artists in Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Kentucky, Ohio and Wisconsin.

The 2016 Efroymson Contemporary Arts Fellowship recipients listed below were awarded $25,000 a piece to help them continue their artistic development:

Blane De St Croix, Bloomington, IN; Installation

Scott Hocking, Detroit, MI; Installation

Julie Schenkelberg, Grand Rapids, MI; Installation

Edra Soto, Chicago, IL; Installation

Amanda Williams, Chicago, IL; Installation

The Efroymson Contemporary Arts Fellowship was created in 2004 to foster creativity and to encourage contemporary artists at all stages of their careers. This unrestricted award supports the personal and professional development of the recipients and can be used for living expenses, equipment and supplies, studio rental, travel essential to artistic research, to develop new bodies of work, or to complete works in progress.

Fellows are selected based on the quality, skill, creativity and uniqueness of their work; their commitment to developing their work; and the impact the award will have on their careers.

This year’s Fellows were chosen by a five-member selection committee through a blind selection process. The selection committee included:

Jeremy Efroymson, vice chair of the Efroymson Family Fund

Justine Ludwig, director of exhibitions/senior curator, Dallas Contemporary

Dan Cameron, contemporary art curator, California and New York

Nicole J. Caruth, director of pedagogy and public practice, The Union for Contemporary Art

Elisa Wouk Almino, associate editor, Hyperallergic

Edra Soto, Chicago, IL; Installation
www.edrasoto.com

Edra seeks to provide engaging spaces that erase boundaries between the audience, the artist, and the work of art. In pursuing this goal she has created immersive site-specific work comprised of both traditional and unusual art objects to facilitate public engagement. Her primary interest with this fellowship is to create a more substantial and ambitious body of work extending from her existing series titled GRAFT. GRAFT alludes to the decorative iron rejas popular throughout Puerto Rico in which these iron screens became ubiquitous in the architecture of post-war Puerto Rico due to the security they provided and their ability to allow for cross ventilation. Today, theses iron fences are not only viewed as a protection device as much as a language that pertains to the island’s visual culture. This body of work alludes to the aesthetic, decorative and nostalgic qualities of these iron fences. Fellowship support will be used for equipment and fabrication of new works, studio rental, travel to Puerto Rico for artistic research and living expenses.

Edra Soto, Relocating Techniques, 2016, Installation
Wood, books, records, pictures, memorabilia

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