The forthcoming Artists for Artists 5th edition States / In / States draws inspiration from artist Richard Bell’s seminal work Embassy, a public space for imagining and articulating alternate futures and reflecting on stories of oppression. 

States / In / States will focus on the nexus between art practice and experimental forms of sovereignty. It engages with practices that examine themes including legal, economic, and cultural self-determination, speculative forms of governance, the politics of displacement, and dispossession.

States In States workshops are led by international artists, including Richard Bell, Tania Bruguera, and Pinar Ogrenci.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS

Che Applewhaite (Lives London, Born Port of Spain) 

Bao Dachen (Lives Rotterdam/Chongqing, Born Wuhu) 

Tania Canas (Lives Naarm Melbourne, Born San Miguel) 

Joanne Choueiri (Lives Brisbane, Born Beirut) 

Batoul Faour (Lives in Beirut/Toronto, Born Toronto)

Gayatri Kodikal (Lives Rotterdam, Born Chennai)

Maria Renee Morales Garcia (Lives Munster, Born Guatemala City) 

Tra My Nguyen (Lives Berlin, Born Hanoi) 

Riyadhus Shalihin (Lives Kuala Lumpur, Born Bandung) 

Cherry Wood (Lives Beverly Hills Michigan, Born Tegucigalpa)

The States / In / States edition is generously supported by Simon Mordant AO.

e-flux announcement

Artists for Artists is proud to announce a comprehensive presentation of our pedagogical platform as part of the Art & Education School Watch series:

Artists for Artists: Mentorship through Care, Solidarity, and Reciprocity. Stefanos Tsivopoulos and Chrisoula Lionis with Ayesha Singh, Raúl Hott, and Beatrice Rubio-Gabriel

Artists for Artists (AfA) is a pedagogical platform run exclusively by and for artists. Its guiding ethos is that mentorship, community, exchange, and solidarity are each central to the art-making process. This ethos is underpinned by three key principles: artists for artists, peer-to-peer exchange, and radical care. Operating without institutional intermediaries, the AfA platform brings leading international artists into direct communication with early-career artists of diverse backgrounds. After three editions, AfA now counts alumni from over thirty countries among its community. Here, AfA codirector Chrisoula Lionis (based in Athens and Manchester) and AfA initiator and codirector Stefanos Tsivopoulos (based in New York and Amsterdam) discuss the motivation, impact, and aspirations of Artists for Artists, and AfA alumni Beatrice Rubio-Gabriel, Raúl Hott, and Ayesha Singh share their experiences of the platform.

Here is a link to the whole interview.

After an overwhelming response to our open call, AfA is proud to announce the 10 international artists who will take part in our upcoming edition Language Is Never On The Ground. The final group consists of artists working across a broad range of practices, backgrounds, and geographies, from Taipei, Berlin, and Budapest, to Melbourne, Boston, and Zhuhai.

POLITICS OF SHARING
26 - 30 MARCH 2021

INTERNATIONAL ADVISING ARTISTS

The 3rd AfA Masterclass edition addresses the nexus between art practice and the politics of sharing. Led by Advising Artists, Megan Cope, Maria Papadimitriou, Gregory Sholette, and Dmitry Vilensky / Chto Delat?, AfA workshops will explore diverse sharing modalities, analyzing how they impact sublimated histories, contested resources, intersectional communities, and collectives.

POLITICS OF SHARING Micro-Grant Recipients

For the edition POLITICS OF SHARING, the Artists for Artists Peer-to-Peer funding program facilitated 2 Microgrants to the following artists: Myriam Amri / Tunis and Morisha Moodley / London. Micro Grants are generated through enrolment donations being pooled into a fund and autonomously re-distributed by workshop groups through a voting process by the Participating Artists.

POLITICS OF SHARING Participating Artists

We are thrilled by the international interest in our program, and by the strength of applications received from over 35 different countries. The final group consists of 12 artists, activists, collectives, and organizations working across a broad range of practices, diverse backgrounds, and geographies, from New Delhi, Manila, and Esfahan to Tunis, Mexico City, and Brooklyn.

• Myriam Amri / Tunis

• Mac Andre Arboleda / San Pedro City

• Sepideh Behrouzian / Esfahan

• Iñigo Malvido Escobedo & Paola Jalili / Mexico City and Helsinki

• Hermano Luz Rodrigues & Stephanie Lee Yeung / Rotterdam and Brooklyn

• Morisha Moodley / London

• Alisa Oleva / London

• Pararailing (Sixing Xu, Snow Xuecan Ye, Jie Shao) / Shanghai

• Josh Plough / Warsaw

• Beatrice Rubio-Gabriel / Melbourne-Narrm

• Ayesha Singh / New Delhi

• Anthony Terzino / Cambridge MA

The International AfA Masterclass will select a group of twelve early-career artists for a five-day intensive program. Participating Artists will be introduced to methods, practices, and cultures of collaboration, cooperation, and co-imagining. They will:

• Attend small-scale workshops led by international Advising Artists.

• Attend lectures on artistic practice and related thematics.

• Be eligible for the AfA Micro-Grant that will support two selected projects.

Deadline: Monday, March 8th, 2021

Masterclass Dates: 25 - 29 March 2021

Applications are now open. Submit your proposal here.

The Artists for Artists Masterclass is an open pedagogical platform that facilitates a direct connection between established artists and those in their early career stages. International artists leading previous AfA editions include Decolonize this Place (Amin Husain and Nitasha Dhillon), Noah Fischer, Terike Haapoja, Jeanne van Heeswijk, Ahmet Ogut, Vivien Sansour, and Stefanos Tsivopoulos.

ARTISTS FOR ARTISTS MASTERCLASS THE INSTITUTIONAL COLLAPSE
26 - 30 NOVEMBER 2020

For its second edition, AfA Masterclass proceeded with the proposition that institutions have no intrinsic value in society. At a tipping point, communities worldwide are ‘on the march’ - protesting issues including economic collapse, structural racism, forms of colonialism, ecological disaster, corruption, and femicide. In the face of this, institutions appear increasingly anemic, many buckling under the economic and political strain. Others are facing intensified scrutiny for amplifying structural disadvantage and failing to serve community needs.  Is it time to rebuild, resuscitate, or raze? What novel forms of artistic practice can germinate through this institutional failure and precarity? And, what new forms of personal and collective agency can be engendered through art practice? 

The second edition of the AfA Masterclass Series Institutional Collapse focused on:

1. Decoloniality: museums, governance, collections, structure, archives, marginalized histories and knowledge systems, institutional co-option 

2. Activism: community, collectives, networks, safety, infrastructure, solidarity 

3. Care/Repair: memory, modalities of engagement, language, training, access, lived experience, radical forms of care, preservation.

The Institutional Collapse was led by Advising Artists Noah Fischer, Jeanne van Heeswijk, Amin Husain and Nitasha Dhillon (MTL Collective), Vivien Sansour .

INSTITUTIONAL COLLAPSE Participating Artists

We’re thrilled by the international interest in our program, and by the strength of applications received from over 25 different countries. The final group consists of 20 exciting international artists working across a broad range of practices, and from diverse backgrounds and geographies:

2nanas, Athens/Paris; Mohamed Adel Dessouki,Alexandria; Hagar Ezzeldin, Cairo; Gonzalo Hernandez, Kansas; Cody Herrmann, Queens New York; Kaftaar, Tehran/Toronto; Ariana E Kalliga, Athens; Tania Khouri, Brooklyn; Catherine Lie, Sommerville MA; Ana Linhares, Utrecht; Niccolò Moronato, Chicago; Amy Pekal, Amsterdam; Izabela Pluta, Sydney; Pam Quinto, Quezon City; Divya Saraf, Kolkota; Sikarnt Skoolisariyaporn, Bangkok; Jen Valender, Melbourne; Malak Yacout, Cairo; Azza Zein, Melbourne; Danielle Zorbas, Athens

INSTITUTIONAL COLLAPSE Micro-Grant Recipients.

For the edition INSTITUTIONAL COLLAPSE, the Artists for Artists Peer-to-Peer funding program facilitated 4 Microgrants to the following artists: Kaftaar, Tehran/Toronto, Catherine Lie, Sommerville MA, Divya Saraf, Kolkota, and Danielle Zorbas, Athens. Micro Grants are generated through enrolment donations being pooled into a fund and autonomously re-distributed by workshop groups through a voting process by the Participating Artists.

ARTISTS FOR ARTISTS MASTERCLASS RADICAL CARE
JULY 2020

We are very happy to report that our inaugural Radical Care Artists for Artists Masterclass took place successfully in July 2020. With a suite of lectures from Advising Artists Terike Haapoja, Ahmet Ogut, and Stefanos Tsivopoulos, and six workshops beamed across 17 cities including Manila, Santiago, Tunis, Sydney, New York, and Berlin – the results of the AfA have truly exceeded expectations. We are very excited by the international network and peer to peer support generated, and touched by the impact the program has had on Participating Artists.  

RADICAL CARE Participating artists

We were thrilled by the international interest in our program, and by the strength of applications received from over 30 different countries. The final group consists of 24 exciting international artists working across a broad range of practices, and from diverse backgrounds and geographies:

Orestis Athanasopoulos / Paris; Sophie Chalk / Brisbane & New York; Lara Chamas / Melbourne; Alisa Chunchue / Bangkok; Karin Cuyul / Chonchi, Los Lagos Region; Alkisti Efthymiou / Santiago; Elham Eshraghian-Haakansson / Perth; Eliza Evans / McMinnville; Zoe Fitzpatrick Rogers /  New York; Itamar Gov / Berlin; Gabriel Hensche / Stuttgart & Berlin; Raul Hott / Santiago; Soukaina Joual / Fez; Vishal Kumaraswamy / Bangalore; Josephine Lee / Vancouver; Alfred Marasigan / Manila; Engy Mohsen / Cairo; Hilo Mur / Melbourne; Laura Sofía Pérez / New York; Pernilla Philip / Amsterdam; Ivan Sikic / New York; Ebun Sodipo / London; Kate Stodart / Narrm, Melbourne; Justine Youssef / Darug Land, Sydney

We are humbled by the feedback received from AfA Participating and Advising Artists which has been extremely positive. Comments from artists include: 

“What I found really remarkable about this structure, coming from a school environment – being used to being in synthesized safe spaces you need to work at to feel safe…this [AfA]  just had that already… I didn’t feel any risk of being completely vulnerable in sharing my work with everyone here.”  - Sophie Chalk, Participating Artist

“We can generate meaningful intellectual exchange, collegial exchange without having to raise a huge amount of funds…it allows for people to participate wherever they are and also be more tapped into whatever context they are in…this is a different experience talking with people in their homes and homelands.” - Terike Haapoja, Advising Artist

RADICAL CARE Workshops and Advising Artists

Crucial to the success of AfA Masterclasses was the generosity and ethos of Advising Artists, and the pairing of these Advisors with AfA Participating Artists for workshops. Conducted over six sessions, these workshops consisted of 1 Advising Artist working with 8 Participating Artists. Tackling diverse issues including theoretical approaches, studio/practice constraints, ethical issues, and the legacy of projects, the approach and overarching theme of each AfA workshop was shaped and developed by Advising Artists.

RADICAL CARE Micro-Grant Recipients.

For the inaugural edition RADICAL CARE the Artists for Artists Peer-to-Peer funding program facilitated 4 Microgrants to the following artists: Alisa Chunchue, Vishal Kumaraswamy, Alfred Marasigan, and Ebun Sodipo. This was achieved through Participating Artist enrolment fees ($50 pp) being pooled into a fund that was redistributed by workshop groups autonomously according to criteria decided upon by Participating Artist peers.

Artists for Artists (AfA)

The Artists for Artists Masterclass is an online pedagogical program, that facilitates direct connection between internationally established artists, and those in their early career stages. The AfA Masterclasses take on diverse themes, that each consider the role of art in relation to urgent political, social, and cultural issues. AfA Masterclass is characterized by experimentation, inclusivity, and global outreach. Its modalities and praxis are informed by an ethos of solidarity and an equitable peer-to-peer principle. AfA describes this principle as a form of radical care – one of many crucial, yet often overlooked strategies for enduring immediate crises, precarious lifeworks, and unstable futures.