Grant Amount: $5,000 over one year
Award Category: Planning Grant
Tye Clarke is an experiential artist whose work is devoted to centering experience, interaction, transcendence, as well as Black joy and liberation. The $5,000 grant will be used to identify resources and learning opportunities for aspiring experiential designers and immersive artists and to locate and engage Black collaborators and professionals within the discipline. The grant will fund stipends for researchers, travel and other necessary items for the project.
"As I have stepped into this work, and perhaps why it's taking me so long to not only pursue it, is figuring out how," says Clarke. "This funding would assist in the creation of throughways for myself and others like me. This is not a field that is heavily saturated or popularized making it difficult to find resources for education, mentorship or collaboration. Those I have identified are limited and inaccessible due to cost, location and in-person only offerings. These barriers have held me back significantly in the pursuit of fulfilling my artistic passions."
Clarke says she calls herself an immersive artist and an experiential designer because the work that she creates SMELLS like the diaspora when you enter Jamils, TASTES like fresh pancakes from Grandma B’s, captivates your EYESIGHT like ARThouse, FEELS as cozy as August Wilson Center’s Theater and you FEEL the SOUND pulsing through your body like a night at UNION. Or, she says, that’s the intention: to design with experience, interaction, transcendence, and, unequivocally, Black Joy and liberation in mind.
WEB: Notyelikethepresent.com
INSTAGRAM: @badandgooxjy or @gooxjy