Knight Foundation Funds the Future of Art With Grants for South Florida Artists

Work by 2022 Knight New Work winners (clockwise): Cynthia Cruz, “Do you believe there is life on other planets” from AI, AI, and I (ongoing); Jen Clay, “Eyes of the Skin” (2022); Madeline Gannon working with Quipt (2018); Roxana Barba performing (photo by David Narbecki); A MUD Foundation visitor engaging with XRHub, the metaverse experience of the 2021 exhibition Media Under Dystopia 2.0; Detail from Anthony “Mojo” Reed II’s “OVERtown: Our Family Tree” mural, commissioned by MoCAAD

Digital transformation has become the language we use to challenge the status quo, experiment, and reach new audiences. For artists and art organizations, it’s the next frontier. That’s why Knight Foundation awarded a total of $500,000 to winners of the Knight New Work challenge. It’s an effort to accelerate the integration of technology with the arts to offer communities greater access and foster meaningful connections between people and place.

Knight New Work (KNW) 2022 supports South Florida-area artists working in all genres who use technology in their practices to create, disseminate, and enhance the way art is experienced. From their work in interactive performance to immersive installations, the winners, who represent the area’s rich diversity, are creators who push the boundaries of art through technology.

Headquartered in Miami, Knight Foundation has made investments in the arts that have been instrumental in the city’s evolution as an international hub for art and culture. Grants totaling more than $40 million—which include the KNW 2022 awards—were announced in December 2022, bringing the foundation’s total investment over the past 17 years to more than $200 million. This steady-state funding has led to a significant increase in the sustainability of local arts organizations and attracted hundreds of millions of dollars more in grants from many other sources.

When we invest in music and museums, in poetry and performances, we are investing in the fiber that strengthens our communities. Really good art inspires and explains, ennobles, and challenges and helps us understand and connect to a place, and to one another. Integrating technology keeps all that relevant. —Victoria Rogers, Knight Foundation Vice President of Arts

Knight Arts has a geographic focus on eight cities where the Knight brothers owned and operated newspapers: Akron, Charlotte, Detroit, Macon, Miami, Philadelphia, San Jose, and St. Paul. With an intentional strategy to be the second- or third-largest funder of arts institutions and the number-one funder of artists and emerging organizations, Knight aims to make art fully accessible throughout each city.

To learn more about Knight Foundation’s arts program, visit kf.org/arts.

 

KNW 2022 Winners

Roxana Barba: In My Center, a Cyborg Seed
Barba’s interactive performance immerses audiences in a sci-fi myth around the rebirth of a cyborg, a hybrid between machine and organism. It will be presented in co-production with FUNDarte at Miami-Dade County Auditorium On.Stage Blackbox.

Jennifer Clay: Eyes Of The Skin
Clay’s video game uses textiles and stop-motion animation to explore anxiety, depression, and the concept of being “lost in the woods.” In an immersive installation at Locust Projects, textile sculptures will be shown in concert with the projected video game, which can also be downloaded.

Cynthia Cruz: Ai Ai and I Pt.1
Cruz asks one AI spiritual questions; from the responses, the second AI interprets these words into images in an exploration of whether artificial intelligence can help us answer the hard questions we cannot explain. The work will be developed as an immersive installation that can be experienced in person and online as part of a solo exhibition at [NAME] Publications.

Madeline Gannon: Open Source Toolkit for Creative Robotics
Dr. Gannon will develop three interactive installations investigating the creative potential of robotics to be premiered as a solo exhibition at Florida International University Miami Beach Urban Studios (FIU MBUS) gallery.

Miami Museum of Contemporary Art of the African Diaspora: Then I Heard the Sounds of the World… 
Miami Museum of Contemporary Art of the African Diaspora (MoCAAD) will commission new work by Marielle Plaisir, a French-Caribbean multimedia artist based in South Florida who examines social domination, colonialism, race, and class in relation to African American and Caribbean experiences.

MUD Foundation: Media Under Dystopia 4.0 WASD
The MUD Foundation will explore our digital environment and culture with artworks created by visual artists using the internet and technology as a creative medium. The exhibition will feature Alba Triana, Yucef Mehri, Leo Castaneda, Rodolfo Peraza, Filio Galvez, Ernesto Oroza, Ariel Baron-Robbins, and Vuk Ćosić.

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