Anonymous Was a Woman Awards $308,000 in Environmental Art Grants

Anonymous Was a Woman(AWAW) in collaboration with theNew York Foundation for the Arts(NYFA) has announced the recipients of funds from AWAW’s Environmental Art Grants (EAG) program. Nineteen projects led by women-identifying artists from across the United States and its territories whose work engages with ecological concerns receive grants of up to $20,000 apiece, with funding totaling $308,000. The winners were chosen from among a pool of 907 applicants, and include those whose projects are located in Ghana, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Louisiana, New Mexico, Michigan, and Oklahoma.

AWAW, which was founded in 1996, has historically funded work by women-identifying artists over the age of forty and has to date distributed more than $7 million. Established in 2022, the EAG grant grew out of AWAW founder Susan Unterberg’s work with past grantee Jeanne Silverthorne on the artist’s 2021 climate-change-centered bookDisaster Diary.

Among the winning projects are Katie Baldwin Basile and Emily Schiffer’s Lessons from Newtok, a pen-pal project in which youth from towns in Alaska and Massachusetts are invited to share the impacts of climate change on their communities; Shayla Blatchford’s The Anti-Uranium Mapping Project, an interactive digital scheme showing the impact of uranium mining on the Navajo Nation in New Mexico; Emily Cohen Ibañez’sOrquídea, a kaleidoscopic film on the political and ecological life of orchids in Colombia; Leila Mattina/Trama Antillana’s Decolonizing Blue, which will recreate a traditional indigo-processing station as a community hub in Puerto Rico; and Victoria-Idongesit Udondian’s ‘Okrika’ Reclaimed!, which addresses the environmental devastation caused by Africa’s secondhand clothing industry.

“As we again approach the record for the hottest year in human history, it is undeniable that climate change is an urgent crisis—and one that is top of mind for artists,” said Unterberg in a statement. “The enormous response to this grant is proof that artists are eager to confront the practical and existential challenges of our current moment, often in beautiful, radical, and poetic ways. These projects are rooted in activating communities and individuals to address the many injustices that climate change exacerbates. I know that the projects supported by this grant will change attitudes and inspire action.”

A full list of grantees and their projects is below.

Katie Baldwin Basile and Emily Schiffer, Lessons from Newtok (Mertarvik, AK, and Provincetown, MA)

Shayla Blatchford, The Anti-Uranium Mapping Project (Santa Fe, NM)

Dorchester Weather, The Lot Next Door (Boston)

Roni Jo Draper, Marissa Lila, Jenn Lee Smith, Nicole Docta, Good Fire (Weitchpec, Humboldt County, CA)

Dara Friedman, Sky Woman Women Project (Seneca Nation of Indians, Cattaraugus Indian Territory, Mohawk Nation at Akwesasne, Buffalo, and Great Valley, NY)

Tia-Simone Gardner, Chronotopophobias (Fairfield, AL)

Hekima Hapa, Sew Green Fashion Camp (Brooklyn, NY)

Yari Helfeld and Nami Helfeld, The Parade of Time (Orocovis, Puerto Rico)

Emily Cohen Ibañez, Orquídea (Colombia)

Amy Kennedy, Vanishing Points: Words for Disappearing (Gulf Coast of Louisiana)

Petra Kuppers/Turtle Disco, Crip Drifts: Michigan (four sites in Michigan)

Leila Mattina/Trama Antillan, Decolonizing Blue (Barrio Llano, Aibonito, Puerto Rico)

Jenni Morello, Age of Loneliness (New York, New Jersey, California, Texas, Japan, Guyana, Alaska)

Koyoltzintli, Tinkui, Seven Acts for the beginning, end and beginning of time (Hudson Valley, NY) 

Ana Bessie Ratner, The Other Almanac (Brooklyn, NY)

brooke smiley & SOZO, EARTH.SPEAKS (Oklahoma and California)

Colleen Thurston, Drowned Land (Oklahoma)

Victoria-Idongesit Udondian, ‘Okrika’ Reclaimed! (Accra, Ghana)

Loren Waters and Rebecca Jim, ᏗᏂᏠᎯ ᎤᏪᏯ (Meet Me at the Creek) Project (Miami, OK)