Asian Women Giving Circle Awards $76,000 in Arts and Activism Grants in 2022

 
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | July 2022
Contact: Hali Lee
 

Asian Women Giving Circle Awards $76,000 in Arts and Activism Grants in 2022

NEW YORK — The Asian Women Giving Circle today named ten new grantees for 2022. They include an archival project memorializing the AAPI experience during the pandemic and the escalation of ant-Asian hate and a forthcoming anthology featuring the voices of Black and Asian American feminists. Nine projects, led by NYC-based Asian American women artists and community organizations, were awarded $8,000. Multidisciplinary artist and 2020 AWGC grantee Jaime Sunwoo received a $4,000 “boost” grant to support her performance work.

“The projects we funded this year struck us for their creativity and commitment, their sense of outrage, remembrance, gratitude, and joy in response to these unprecedented times,” said AWGC co-founder Hali Lee. “These are voices we need right now.”


THE 2022 GRANTEES ARE:

API LGBTQ Multimedia Project promotes intergenerational conversation and healing through 10 storytelling workshops. LGBTQ participants will learn interview, storytelling and multimedia production skills to create portraits of supportive parents, gaining insight into their own parents’ struggles navigating journeys of immigration, survival, and their own children’s coming out. Workshops will be facilitated by Mengwen Cao, Rochelle Kwan and Hannah Yoon.

Archive as Memorial is an exhibition in partnership with NYU’s A/P/A Institute’s A/P/A Voices: A COVID-19 Public Memory Project created by, for, and about A/P/A communities in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and the rise in anti-Asian violence. The fall 2022 in-person and digital exhibit will showcase stories, voices and artifacts, creating a gathering space to process, heal, memorialize, and dream during a time of immense trauma.
 
Black and Asian Feminist Solidarities: An Anthology is a forthcoming collection that spotlights and interrogates historical and contemporary Black and Asian American feminist cross-racial organizing, leadership, and perspectives. Edited by Rachel Kuo, Jaimee Swift and Tiffany Diane Tso and published by Haymarket Books. The grant will fund honorariums for contributing writers.
 
Both of Me is a two-channel video installation and short film that centers around a migrant domestic worker in the US and the young daughter she had to leave in the Philippines. Produced with the support of Filipino Advocates for Justice, the work explores the feminization of global migration and perseverance of gendered roles in labor and religion defined by colonizing forces dating back hundreds of years. The grant will fund post-production, distribution and publicity.
 
Gathering will be the largest art exhibition with AAPI artists since Godzilla’s “Why Now” exhibit in 2001, taking place at two Brooklyn art spaces, FiveMyles and TSA-NY, in July 2023. Curated by and featuring members of Asianish, an informal AAPI artist group, the show will celebrate the work and relationships of 43 artists exploring the meaning of community. The grant will fund programming and honorariums for the participating artists.
 
Standing Above the Clouds is a feature-length documentary on the indigeonous women leaders who have successfully sustained the largest political movement in modern Hawaiian history by preventing the construction of the world’s largest telescope on their sacred mountain, Mauna Kea. An exploration of sisterhood and the social and emotional labor of retaining ancient ceremonies in a rapidly modernizing world.
 
Jaime Sunwoo and Free Rein Projects
Specially Processed American Me, a surreal autobiographical performance that uses the history of Spam as a portal into the artist’s upbringing and her family’s experiences during the Korean War, had a 12-show run in NYC in 2022 and is seeking support for a U.S. national tour including a second run in New York City. Sunwoo/Free Rein Projects is a 2020 AWGC grantee.
 
Then & Now is the theme of this podcast’s upcoming season featuring the untold stories of the Vietnamese diasporic community. It will deep dive into history, experiences and the evolution of Viet culture within Vietnamese American communities. The grant will fund community engagement activities to source, collect and explore topics that are often deemed contentious within families. VBP is a 2019 AWGC grantee.
 
Modeled after Sesame Street, Woori Show is an educational Korean-American web series for young people that blends elements of puppet theater, dance, visual arts, and music to disrupt xenophobia while centering AAPI voices, art, and practice. The grant will support the show’s second season, which will cover contemporary issues affecting AAPI communities  including racial bias, injustice, gender equity, and immigrant rights.
 
Solidarity Forever will commemorate the 40th anniversary of the 1982 landmark strike by women garment workers, the largest strike in Chinatown’s history, with a month-long series of community events in June-July 2022. The celebration will feature live performances, multimedia exhibitions, panels, and a self-guided walking tour. The W.O.W. Project is a 2017 AWGC grantee.
 
The Asian Women Giving Circle, the first and largest giving circle in the nation led by Asian American women, funds art projects that contribute to cultural and political change created by Asian American women artists and activists in New York City. AWGC is fiscally sponsored by the Ms. Foundation for Women. www.asianwomengivingcircle.org