In April 2024, the Exposure Artist Program awarded its second round of grants, which total $300,000. The 17 awards include support for individual artists and collectives, transformative justice grants for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) artists working at the intersection of art and activism, and to artists who have never received any foundation funding before.
Grant awards were decided by a panel of regional artists: Mahoganee Amiger, Ana Armengod, Nahshon Dion, Nia Malika Dixon, Samuel Gonzalez, Jasmine Hearn, Dr. Cameron Herman, Masud Olufani, Di Smith and Mahogany Thaxton.
First-time grantee awards ($20,000)
| RaiZArts (Ray's Art) | Visual Artist | To support publicizing his anime art, a distinctive style of animation originating in Japan, to the greater anime community through conventions in Pittsburgh and across the United States. | $5,000 |
| TACUMBA | Multidisciplinary Artist | To support “The Future Is Black,” a project to create high-quality, meaningful experiences with and for local artists and creatives. | $5,000 |
| Tresa Murphy-Green | Multidisciplinary Artist | To support their work as a DJ, including recording and sharing of mixes to a national audience and to support development in metal smithing and writing. | $5,000 |
| Tyra Jamison | Musician | To support an official entrance to the local and regional music scene in a way that is authentic to the artist. | $5,000 |
Individual/Collective awards ($150,000)
| Sobia Ahmad | Multidisciplinary Artist | to create a series of four (6 ft. x 3 ft. each) mixed media experimental, abstract weavings titled “On Tender Ground.” Guided by the artist’s interest and research in spiritual ecology, everyday materials and the domestic space, these weavings will be made from recycled and repurposed materials such as scraps of paper, fabric and natural dyes. | $20,000 |
| Jaime Guerrero | Craft | To expand his artistic practice, primarily centered around glass sculpting. | $20,000 |
| Ifeoma | Visual Artist | To support work on the series “We All Carry Our Own World.” The purpose of this series is to literally express what those around us may be carrying, whether it is heavy or light, joyful or harmful. If we could literally see the world each of us is carrying when we interact, how would we see it? How would it affect our interactions? | $20,000 |
| Erika Denae J | Multidisciplinary Artist | To support the development of her artistic practice that combines singing, songwriting, producing, writing and creating spaces that engage artists and young adults in her community. | $10,000 |
| DS Kinsel | Visual Artist | To further develop "Brain Bone Blood," a collection of mixed media paintings and artifacts. | $20,000 |
| José Pérez IV | Theater and Performance | To facilitate rehearsal processes which support the mental health of artists from marginalized communities; to create original plays which feature both spectacle and depth; and to launch, at a national level, a new genre called “fight theatre.” | $20,000 |
| Ricardo Iamurri Robinson | Conceptual Sound Artist | To support field recordings, sound installations, music releases, films and sculptures that push the boundaries of sound art. | $20,000 |
| Caroline Yoo | Theater and Performance | To support “Fury|Fate|Fly,” a 90-minute narrative performance and art installation on silenced Korean and Korean American women, projected to debut next year. Spotlighting eight mythical and historical women and their stories that have been erased from history for being too rebellious, “Fury|Fate|Fly” will be an experimental theater spectacle. | $20,000 |
Transformative Justice awards ($130,000)
| Michele P. Ellison | Literary Arts | To support development opportunities in writing. | $20,000 |
| Sahara Harrington | Visual Arts | To create a collection of paintings that shed light on the extreme oppression of women in other countries. | $20,000 |
| JADED | Multidisciplinary | To support operating costs of transitioning JADED to a sustainable creative hub for catalyzing Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) community arts, history and cultural practice in Pittsburgh. | $35,000 |
| Sibyls Shrine | Multidisciplinary | To support programs of the residency collective of Black artists who are mothers. The residencies offer a space to live and create artworks and provide stipends and materials, enabling artists to fully focus their time and energy on creating. | $35,000 |
| Elina Zhang | Literary Arts | To continue developing a manuscript project, “THE WRECK ITSELF,” a book-length intellectual memoir. The project is an exploration of Zhang’s sexual coming-of-age and an intervention in the way stories about sexual violence are told. | $20,000 |