The U.S. Latinx Art Forum announces CHISPA: Mini Virtual Studio Visits with Latinx Artists June 29, 2021

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The U.S. Latinx Art Forum announces CHISPA: Mini Virtual Studio Visits with Latinx Artists

June 29, 2021

The U.S. Latinx Art Forum (USLAF) announces the second of three programs under the umbrella of the Ford Foundation-funded Mazorca Initiative, which provides support to artists impacted by both the Covid-19 pandemic and ongoing threats to justice caused by systemic racism, xenophobia, and state-sanctioned violence.

Following the first round of the CHARLA Fund, which awarded grants to fund artist-generated dialogues, CHISPA invites visual artists to record short videos responding to a set of prompts that ask them to state their name and where they’re based, select an artwork to reflect on, and respond to the question, “What does the ‘X’ in Latinx art mean to me?” See completed CHISPA videos here.

Spanning geographies, backgrounds, and artistic mediums and styles, the ten artists selected to create CHISPA videos offer discerning insights into their practices in the three-to-five-minute videos they submitted.

Artists were nominated by USLAF’s external advisory board, a world-class group of artists, curators, and academics with expertise in Latinx art. Like the chispa (spark) that inspires its name, CHISPA artists’ “hot takes” shed light on the issues that animate their respective practices and on the real-life and symbolic significance, possibilities, and limitations of the ‘X,’ underscoring the complexity and multifaceted nature of working and thriving as a Latinx artist in 2021.

CHISPA Artists:

Francheska Alcantara (The Bronx, NY)
Dianna Frid (Chicago, IL)
Alexander Hernández (San Francisco, CA)
Tina Hernández (Houston, TX)
Coralina Rodríguez Meyer (Brooklyn, NY and Miami, FL)
Emily Oliveira (Brooklyn, NY)
Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz (Orlando, FL)
Chelsea Ramírez (Brooklyn, NY)
Leandra Urrutia (Memphis, TN)
Victor Yañez-Lazcano (Milwaukee, WI)

About the U.S. Latinx Art Forum and Mazorca Initiative

The U.S. Latinx Art Forum (USLAF) champions artists and arts professionals engaged in research, studio practice, pedagogy, and writing. We generate and support initiatives that advance the vitality of Latinx art through an intergenerational network that spans academia, art institutions, and collections. USLAF currently comprises over 450 members who are artists, scholars, educators, and graduate students. To find out how to become a member, see our website here.

CHISPA is the second program in USLAF’s 2020–2021 Mazorca Initiative. The initiative consists of three project categories that allow USLAF to disburse modest yet meaningful stipends to artists while also supporting their creativity and disseminating their work.

In addition to the CHARLA Fund and CHISPA, Mazorca will also include an online art exhibition project. All projects funded by Mazorca will be archived on the USLAF website to ensure the future access to artists’ work. Through the Mazorca Initiative, USLAF seeks to recognize and honor the creativity, plurality and inter-connectedness of communities who produce art that affirms life and imagines the just world we need while strengthening an inter-generational, cross-racial, and pan-ethnic network of artists and interlocutors across the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean.