Knight Foundation Announces 2025 Arts + Tech Fellows
200May 29, 2025
TheJohn S. and James L. Knight Foundationon May 28 revealed the five recipients of its 2025 Arts + Tech Fellowships. Administered by United States Artists, the annual program supports artists exploring fresh approaches to technology and new media.Ash Arder,Akea Brionne,Matthew Angelo Harrison,Michelle Lopez, andAntonia Wrightwill each receive an unrestricted $50,000 award along with access to financial planning assistance. The quintet will additionally be featured in Shift Space, the fellowship’s annual online publication.
Three of this year’s recipients—Arder, Brionne, and Harrison—hail from Detroit. Arder is known for an interdisciplinary practice whose research-based works investigate physical and conceptual systems, particularly those related to ecology and industry. Brionne deploys lens-based and textile media as well as artificial intelligence in examining contemporary consequences of Western colonialism and its suppression of Black and Indigenous ways of life. Harrison is a sculptor who uses resin to encapsulate objects from his ancestral past and his diasporic present. Lopez, of Philadelphia, is a sculptor and installation artist who explores feminist and race politics through the lens of a minority body. Born and based in Miami, Cuban American artist Wright investigates systems of power via a practice that encompasses video, coding, performance, photography, sound, light, and sculpture.
“Artists have always shaped how we understand the world. The Knight Arts + Tech Fellowship celebrates that enduring power while embracing new tools to do it,” said Kristina Newman-Scott, the Knight Foundation’s vice president for arts, in a statement. “This fellowship is about more than technology. It’s about investing in visionary artists whose practices challenge dominant narratives, expand civic imagination and invite us to see and feel differently. Through Shift Space and their individual work, these fellows are not just experimenting with media, they are reshaping cultural discourse, bridging disciplines, and helping us build more connected, expressive communities. We are proud to support them, not just for what they make, but for how they move us forward.”