Cornell Council for the Arts

2020-2021 CCA Grants

MachinationAnnie Lewandowski
Powerdove, the musical duo of Thomas Bonvalet and Senior Lecturer in Music Annie Lewandowski, premiered three performances of their collaborative piece, entitled Machination.
Regio (Royal)Regio (Royal)Juan Manuel Aldape Muñoz
The pandemic devastated Latinx and Black communities the most in the United States. In particular, meat factories that employ Latinx workers had some of the highest single-cluster outbreaks. Regio (Royal) uses the power of theatrical and puppetry encounters between performers and audiences to create a collective sense of how immigration impacts everyone.
Fugue: The SightHosted by Xak Bjerken
Cornell faculty poet Lyrae Van-Clief Stefanon and bassist Desmond Bratton continue their 3-year collaboration on issues of race and spirituality with the release of their new work, Fugue: The Sight made at Ithaca's AME Zion Church, followed by a Zoom conversation with Cornell students and the community.
Mini Locally Grown Dance 2021Department of Performing & Media Arts
Performers explore the vertical space of the Kiplinger Theatre. Untethered in these strange times, the dancers climb to unsteady heights to explore new groundings to challenge the theater’s conventions of physical relationships and to investigate beautifully and wildly the meaning of intimacy.
The Life and Work of Florence PriceDepartment of Music
This groundbreaking conference features research and performance on the life and work of Florence Price. In 1933, Price was the first African-American female composer to win a premiere with a major American symphony orchestra. Price never earned the posterity she deserved, which was dictated by a culture that favored the music of white men. Recently, a large collection of her music and documents were discovered. Her notes reveal that she visited Ithaca, New York, and was in discussion with Cornell’s “A Cappella Chorus” and the director of the Cornell Symphony Orchestra, Robert Hull.
Laying the CutJack Elliott
Operating as a retrospective, the exhibition pays homage to Elliott’s long-term fascination with the material culture of the anthroposphere and the ways in which its formation is often indicative of society's values as they pertain to the natural world.
Ecologies of ConsumptionsZaneta Hong
This work provides a survey of material/food alliances, in the face of anthropogenic disturbance; presents issues of food insecurity/instability as a result of climate change and the (over)consumption of natural resources through the collection of texts, illustrations, photographs, maps, information graphics – culminating in a series of designed objects + video presentation – that engages viewers through a series of material/food narratives.
Festival of Solo Repertoire by Underrepresented ComposersCornell Orchestras
Through a series of 12 speakers, Cornell Orchestras addresses the serious inequities present in the institution of the orchestra due to its repertoire and systemic inequities present in the training of classical musicians leading to a lack of diversity in our orchestras. Instead of holding the annual Cornell Concerto Competition, students were invited to perform works by underrepresented composers who may be women, BIPOC, LGBTQ.
Off-Campus/On-Screen: Cornell Life in the Time of COVID-19Rebekah Maggor, Jeffrey Palmer, Youngsun Palmer
A collaboration between documentary filmmakers Jeffrey Palmer and Youngsun Palmer, and theatre director and dramatic deviser Rebekah Maggor, Off-Campus/On-Screen is an interconnected series of short films that explore experiences of lockdown, pandemic, economic crisis, and protest, juxtaposing their differentiated impact on students from diverse backgrounds.
The HiveJason Simms
The Hive is a hypothetical indoor/outdoor performance gathering venue designed with community, sustainability, accessibility, and social distancing in mind; with design ideas presented virtually, participants will experience The Hive from home.
Virtual Vibrance: Making, Shaking, Breaking PerformanceAssociation of Graduates in Theater
Cornell Ambassadors for Media and Performance (CAMP) in collaboration with Graduate Researchers in Media and Performing Arts (GRMPA) use inclusive, collaborative models of performance-making to present Virtual Vibrance, featuring three devised performances led by BIPOC artists.
BenchmarkAnna Evtushenko
Benchmark is a play about a female history teacher; she is all about remembering and documentation, and then has to deal with Alzheimer's. It's a magical realism (or non-realism) story about her and the children she's found and lost. Benchmark was set to have a staged reading at Cornell on March 21, 2020, although COVID-19 prohibited an in-person performance until 2021.
Wet Ink Ensemble: Distance and DiffusionCornell Contemporary Chamber Players
The Cornell Contemporary Chamber Players, a student organization committed to ensuring that Cornell remains at the forefront of contemporary music and performance practice, holds a 4-day virtual collaborative residency with NYC-based Wet Ink Ensemble, “a collective of composers, performers and improvisers dedicated to adventurous music-making.” The residency culminates in several world premieres of site-specific works performed in and around the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art.
BeMask'd: Wearable Art in the Time of QuarantineJenny Leigh Du Puis
This exhibition features wearable art masks and costumes created by the artist during quarantine to reconnect with her creative design practice and reflect upon the following question: In the time of COVID-19, how do we challenge and interrogate the position of face masks in our individual and collective experiences?
An Anthropology of EverythingMorgan Evans-Weiler
An Anthropology of Everything is a group show centering on the theme of conceptual uses of language and text to examine an individual exploration of the self in relation to the social. The production features an interdisciplinary and international group of artists including Ryoko Akama (JP/UK), Asha Sheshadri (US), Bonnie Jones (US), Alex Hamrick (US), Natalie Neumaier (AU), Manfred Werder (CH), and Morgan Evans-Weiler (US). Artists represent an array of mediums that include video, sound, drawing, and sculpture to explore conceptual uses of original and found text and language in relation to themes of identity, duration, cultural criticism, poetry and nature.
19/NineteenAlexa Kanarowski
19/Nineteen began toward the end of 2019, when Alexa had just a few months left of being 19 years old. As such, it was made to examine anxieties about no longer being a teenager and leaving behind the second decade of this century. 19/Nineteen seeks to explore self surveillance and a creation of data that stems from a desire to archive oneself and the events that occur, which is analogous to the way many people use social media.
Our Latex and Steel HeritageSabrina Haertig Gonzalez
Through home-chef cyborg aesthetics and Taino Duho sculpture, Our Latex and Steel Heritage presents the collapsing of objects, tools, and beings within extractive economies.
Visiona 2022 - Back to the WombFarzana Hossain
This project was in response to the architecture building created for students. The design was articulated after the deep research of students' mental, physical, and emotional health and well-being. Our goal was to create a soft space where students can rest, nap, or hang out.
The Absentee and The GulfCaitlin Kane
A staged reading of Julia Doolittle’s play, The Absentee, which poses urgent questions about grappling with grief, finding love, and democratic duty in a moment of unprecedented isolation. Caitlin later presents a staged reading of Audrey Cefaly’s The Gulf, which won the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Drama.
Within The Infinite GridFernan Bilik + Justin Joel Tan
Within The Infinite Grid seeks to rethink how we engage and interact with the built environment through the increasing pervasiveness of social media and its infinite grid — conceptualizing this idea through a built structure that comments on the intersectionality of agency and spectatorship, spectacle and surveillance, as well as infiniteness and arbitrariness.
Tapedum LucidumTina Lam
This solo exhibition queries that which pervades through the universe as an enigmatic unknown, a primordial source that is simultaneously a void and a plenitude. Can the unknown only oscillate at the periphery of that which is known? Is the day but a prolongation of the night?
Humanity ReclaimedGeorgia Manning
This project is a collection of clothing that represents the theme of Humanity Reclaimed. In this uncertain time, it is easy to gloss over the needs we have as human beings. Georgia creates work that emphasizes imperfection as what makes us who we are. Using the medium of clothing to represent visually what we do as a society everyday, Georgia's collection is a quest to reclaim humanity by designing pieces that reflect a life of depth and true nourishment.
Lo Que QueremosPaloma Vianey
In a reality where gendered violence institutes the ways of living for women in Latin-America, walking into a fictional, knotted realm seems compulsory. Lo Que Queremos (What We Want) portrays the desperate desire for peace in contrast with the reality of a world filled with femicides, corruption, and hopelessness. Through painting and sculpture, this show attempts to protest for a world all women deserve.
MakEarChristine McDonald
MakEar is a podcast run by artists who interview artists and interdisciplinary makers in the time of the pandemic, asking questions such as, "How are you finding new ways to make work happen?" The mission of MakEar is to publish snapshots of living artists, of all ages and disciplines, to be shared and accessed by a larger community beginning with an audience at Cornell. The process of these interviews gives selected artists a platform to connect and share their practice and help sustain them during this difficult time.
Midnight ZoneDavid Nasca
Midnight Zone is a sculptural environment based on hydrothermal vent communities as a metaphor for queer identities. Design cues are taken from the morphologies of deep sea organisms and the queer underground and nightlife. Vinyl, latex, cast plastics, ceramics, leather, and LEDs come together to create an immersive installation that takes viewers to the bottom of the ocean and to the darkroom at a disco.
AsiamnesiaSara Pistono + Duoer Jia
Asiamnesia, written by Sun Mee Chomet, is an 60-70 minute intersectional ensemble piece about the representation of Asian/Asian American women in film and on stage. It is an exploration of the stereotypes that plague Asian/Asian American actresses throughout their careers, as well as a celebration of their versatility and endurance. Through the inclusion of various historical figures, from Anna May Wong to Isabel Rosario Cooper, as well as a look into contemporary shows and castings, Asiamnesia discusses the politics behind Asian/Asian American representation in the American entertainment industry.
Bundle Dyeing FabricKat Roberts + Lynda Xepoleas
This workshop gives participants the hands-on experience of dyeing a silk scarf or cotton bandana, using plants from the FSAD Natural Dye Garden as well as food waste, while exploring the important role of natural dyes in sustainable fashion. The coloring components natural dyes produce are directly affected by their environment. Sunlight, water, soil, temperature, and predation that occur in a specific location can alter a dye in dynamic ways, giving them the unique ability to infuse place into cloth. Each participant receives a mordanted 100% silk scarf or 100% cotton bandana and dyestuff collected from the Natural Dye Garden or food scraps collected from Cornell’s dining facilities.
Potato SéanceGrace Sachi Troxell
An installation where clay and steel sculptures, in combination with vegetables grown from Grace's own local garden, emerge out of large handmade clay flowerpots. Potato Séance is particularly thought-provoking during our current moment, in which a global pandemic has pushed us to look more closely at our own food sources as well as the complex, vexed state of global food production. The installation evokes these issues while still remaining playful in tone, ultimately depicting a collaboration between—and a celebration of—both the sculptural and the vegetal.
LOST AND FOUNDYvonne Schichtel
LOST AND FOUND addresses the objects of power and ownership in relation to gender. It questions how we view the value of objects and subsequently attach meaning. Following the journey of a woman gone mad, she turns her meaningless, gendered, utilitarian based tools into jewelry. By elevating the value of such objects she thereby elevates her own.
Verses in the CoronaverseAnnie Sheng
Verses in the Coronaverse is a collection of musings, thoughts, and poetry penned about or during the COVID-19 pandemic from members of the Cornell community. In this age of social distancing, Verses in the Coronaverse seeks to bring social intimacy through connecting our individual experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic into a messy, but distinct narrative whole.
After Nature Had Drawn a Few BreathsAdam Shulman
A reflection of intimacy, personal connection, spontaneous creation, varied perspectives, and intervention with our environment: two non-narrative videos, one featuring humans, the other a collaboration with nature, are projected at night on the Schwartz Center and an adjacently installed sculpture.
Cornell MFA NYC Group ExhibitionThe Master of Fine Arts candidates at Cornell University work individually and collectively toward an exhibition in New York City each year. The exhibition serves as a unique opportunity for students to showcase their work together in a major art center. This exhibition also provides an important access point for MFA students and the larger Cornell arts community to connect with the vibrant and important art world in NYC.