Image: Madjeen Isaac (Fellow in Painting '24), "What it Took to Feed the Village," 2023, oil on canvas, 37 x 52 inches, Courtesy of the Artist
Gabriel Barcia-Colombo and Rena Anakwe were recognized with a 2024 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Interdisciplinary Work.
Barcia-Colombo is a mixed media artist whose work focuses on collections, memorialization and the act of leaving one's digital imprint for the next generation. His work takes the form of video sculptures, immersive performances, large scale projections and vending machines that sell human DNA. His video artwork plays upon this modern exigency in our culture to chronicle, preserve and wax nostalgic, an idea which Barcia-Colombo renders visually by “collecting” human portraits on video.
Barcia-Colombo is a faculty member at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. Barcia-Colombo's work has been featured at LACMA, the V&A Museum, The Neon Museum of Las Vegas, TED, Times Square, and Grand Central Station. He is also the co-director of ITP at NYU where he teaches classes such as Video Sculpture.
Anakwe is an interdisciplinary artist, performer, poet and healer working primarily with sound, visuals, and scent. Exploring intersections between traditional healing practices, spirituality and performance, she creates works focused on sensory-based, experiential interactions using creative technology. She is based in Brooklyn by way of Nigeria and Canada.
Anakwe is a graduate of: the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts (MPS), The Actors Studio Drama School at Pace University (MFA), and New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business (BS).
Currently, she is part of the 2023-2024 Lincoln Center Social Sculpture Cohort with her durational, public art project “Lifting the Ground Up [iter.02].” She was awarded a 2022 Art Matters Artist2Artist Fellowship, a 2021-2022 MacDowell Fellowship for Interdisciplinary Arts, a 2022 Jack Nusbaum Artist Residency at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music), and the 2021 Canadian Women Artists’ Award from NYFA & the CWC (Canadian Women’s Club) of New York.
The NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship makes unrestricted cash grants of $8,000 to New York State-based artists working in 15 disciplines, recognizing five disciplines per year on a triennial basis. This program is administered by New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), with leadership support from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA).