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2021


Converging liberations

RESIDENTS


The CreateWell Fund is proud to present our 2021 residents for the inaugural Converging Liberations Residency. CONVERGING LIBERATIONS is an experimental and community-informed project committed to the belief that artistic practice is key to imagining and practicing liberatory futures for Massachusetts-based artists of color. Artists receive a fully funded 1-month residency, plus living and travel stipends. The residency's design is informed by community feedback, carried out by members of CreateWell's Co-Tending Designers, and hosted by the Studios at MASS MoCA. The residency is designed to provide resources, time and space for community building, research and artistic experimentation across disciplines. 

2021 Artists in Residence

Anukriti Kaushik (they/them) is a Boston-based artist. Predominantly working with drawing, painting, sculpture, video, writing, and photo, their practice involves rendering the female and queer body to recontextualise it as sacred and sublime. Drawing from personal experiences, Anukriti generates visual narratives that challenge rigid norms and traditions pertaining to beauty, gender, and sexuality. DiDi Delgado (DiDi/they/them) is a Radical Visionary and Philanthropist, Award-Winning Author and Poet, Experienced Anti-Racism Educator, Engaging Public Speaker, and a Passionate Advocate and Activist for Black women, non-men, and MaGes (Marginalized Genders). Jaypix Belmar (they/them) is a Boston based photographer. Keysha Rivera (she/her) is a Puerto Rican multidisciplinary artist originally from Holyoke, Massachusetts. Rivera's practice currently focuses on Puerto Rican futurism using textiles and family photos. Rivera is building anticolonial narratives by using crafts such as sewing to stitch together intergenerational experiences that act as a form of resistance to U.S occupation in Puerto Rico. Rivera hopes to continue to uphold the importance of craft as a language and as a way to heal. Perla Mabel (they/them) is an Afro-Caribbean multi-disciplinary artist, born in Boston, MA, raised in the U.S. and the Dominican Republic. They deeply identify with their Dominican heritage, channeling themes of survival and recalling historical events and figures from their culture. Their practice reclaims their Blackness by incorporating satin fabrics used in rituals practiced in Santeria. Mabel honors the people they paint by using the fabric as their canvas, along with other materials, beads, and objects. With fifty-seven years behind the lens, Los Angeles born Lolita Parker Jr. is a third generation photographer. As oral historian, installation artist and urban farmer she relocated to Boston with her family in 1993 for the weather. Mercedes D. Loving-Manley is a performer and storyteller born and raised in Dorchester, MA. With a Bachelor of Arts degree in creative writing and film, the stories she writes center the lives of Black people, especially Black trans people. Her forthcoming film 'The World and Then Some’ highlights the experiences of Black LGBTQ+ folks from her hometown, a community near and dear to her. Mercedes’ hope is that her art can be a tool in the process of healing and community cultivation for folks from various intersections within Black identity/ies. Nia Holley is an interdisciplinary artist whose work is deeply influenced by what survival and healing look like within Black and Indigenous communities. Her work ranges from printmaking, ceramics, metalsmithing, and traditional arts to bringing tribal communities together around food justice, agroecology, land, and history. She has actively engaged with Indigenous-led grassroots organizations as an outreach and project coordinator and has participated in Nipmuc programs since before she could walk and talk. Nia is a co-founder of the Eastern Woodlands Rematriation collective. noriyoshi wakabayashi needle is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and community organizer currently living in Boston, Massachusetts. Shantel Miller’s (she/her) figurative paintings create a visual language to transcend the lived and imagined experiences of her inner world. While exploring constructs of race, gender, and religion, she pulls from personal narrative as a departure point for understanding broader social realities. Rixy (she/her) conceptualizes Feminine divinity in their various forms and characterizations. Working primarily through Painting, Sculpture, & Public Art, her tool belt of disciplines help reinterpret stories of agency – like episodes of a never-ending cartoon. The work often plays on the range of sensual femininity. Vick Quezada (they/them) is an Indigenous-Latinx artist, they queer the archaeological through hybrid forms and aesthetics. Inspired by the guiding principles of Aztec Philosophy, Quezada integrates the theory of interconnected matter and how it’s embedded in the cosmos, planet earth, ecology, and all lifeforms.