Michael Menchaca: San Antonio Artist Receives $50,000 Grant from the Mellon Foundation
Michael Menchaca at an Exhibit pre-show: San Antonio Artpace, One of three Artists in Residence. Photo: Ricardo Romo, July 14, 2021
The Mellon Foundation: Breaking New Ground in Funding for Latinx Artists
In a long-overdue effort to support Latinx artists across the nation, the Mellon Foundation has joined forces with the US Latinx Art Forum (USLAF) and the Ford Foundation to establish the Latinx Artist Fellowship, a $50,000 unrestricted award to 15 multigenerational Latinx visual artists each year for an initial commitment of five years.
Codesigned by USLAF and administered in collaboration with the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Fellowship is the first significant prize of its kind, celebrating the plurality and diversity of Latinx artists while aiming to secure their place in the story of American art.
Michael Menchaca art work. Credit Mellon Foundation.
Michael Menchaca:
“I work with print and new-media formats to address the ways in which government agencies and Big Data technologies have constructed a digital caste system to maintain existing racial inequities.”
Michael Menchaca is a multidisciplinary Xicanx artist active in disrupting racist narratives that target Latinx, Black, and Indigenous People of Color using print media and new media formats to generate anti-colonial, anti-racist, and anti-capitalist visions of the world. As a de-indigenized Mexican American born and raised in San Antonio—a community with colonial roots in military and civil policing practices—Menchaca, like many Texans, is constantly mediating the internalized racist and colorist beliefs embedded in them by the legacy of white supremacy in the Americas. Menchaca creates multimedia installations that apply a combination of printmaking, painting, and digital animation, exploring Latinx identities in a hyper-mediated American landscape.
Menchaca received their associate degree from San Antonio College in 2007, their BFA from Texas State University in 2011, and their MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2015. They have been an artist-in-residence at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in Maine; Vermont Studio Center, the Wassaic Project, NY; the Segura Arts Studio, Notre Dame, IN; and The Studios at MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA. Exhibitions of their work have taken place at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Benton, AR, El Museo del Barrio, New York; the Davis Museum, Wellesley, MA; North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh; The Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA; the McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX; and the International Print Center New York. They are one-half of the artist collective Dos Mestizx.
Latinx Artist Fellowship
Supporting the most compelling Latinx artists working in the US today. Latinx artists—people of Latin American or Caribbean descent who live and work in the US—have made significant and vital contributions to American culture. Yet these artists have lacked visibility and received little of the philanthropic or institutional support necessary to secure their place in the story of American art. Designed to address this systemic and longstanding lack of support, the Latinx Artist Fellowship will award $50,000 each to a multigenerational cohort of 15 Latinx visual artists each year for an initial commitment of five years. Administered by the US Latinx Art Forum in collaboration with the New York Foundation for the Arts and supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Ford Foundation, this award is the first significant prize of its kind and celebrates the plurality and diversity of Latinx artists and aesthetics.
