Creative Capital Awards $2.45M to 55 Artists

The Creative Capital Foundation has announced the recipients of its annual grant awards, amounting to $2.45 million allotted across 55 artists and collectives for 49 individual projects. Each grant provides $50,000 of unrestricted project funding alongside multi-year professional development and opportunities for community building.

Founded in 1999, Creative Capital deliberately taps “risk-taking, underinvested artists” who work across visual and performing arts, architecture and design, film, and literature to facilitate socially engaged and culturally meaningful projects. Harmony Holiday, Rashaad Newsome, Morehshin Allahyari, Susan Chen, and Ilana Savdie are among the awardees selected from a pool of over 5,600 applicants.

The foundation outlined in a press release that 75% of the 2025 recipients are artists of color, 56% identify as women, and 18% identify as gender non-conforming, transgender, or nonbinary. Artists with disabilities make up 11% of the awardee cohort. The recipients range between 29 and 72 years old, with artists representing 18 states across the US and 29 cities total — including Berlin, Germany, and Demorestville, Canada.

Among the grantees, 14 are visual artists, 15 work in performing arts, 12 are in the film and moving image sector, three were awarded for projects in technology, and five received grants for literary projects.

“From a landscape opera that tells ancestral stories of environment in the Jurassic canyons of southern Colorado, to an experimental documentary exploring migration and forensics on the South Texas border, to a project that transforms a Louisiana plantation into a site of reckoning, these 55 visionary artist proposals are boldly pushing form and ideas forward,” said Angela Mattox, director of Artist Initiatives at Creative Capital, in a press statement.

The details of each recipient and their project are available here. A list of every grantee and their category award is appended below.

2025 Creative Capital Awards Grantees

Visual Arts

Kathy Aoki
Santa Clara, California
Koons Ruins Atlas
Painting and Printmaking

Susan Chen
Long Island City, New York
Chinatown Girl Scouts: Past & Present
Painting and Printmaking

Jen de los Reyes and Oscar Rene Cornejo
Ithaca, New York, and Chicago, Illinois
LAND
Ecological Art, Social Practice

Katie Grinnan
Los Angeles, California
The Vault
Ecological Art, Sculpture, Video Art

Vishal Jugdeo
Los Angeles, California
Hurl a Rock, Feel a Flame
Installation, Socially-Engaged Visual Art, Video Art

Kameron Neal
Brooklyn, New York
What Year Is It?
Installation, Video Art

Samantha Nye
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Possible Pleasures
Installation, Performance Art, Video Art

Jared Owens
New York, New York
Remembering Attica: the optics of uprising
Painting and Printmaking, Sculpture, Social Practice

Steve Parker
Austin, Texas
HOUSTON IS SINKING
Public Art, Sculpture, Sound Art

Julia Phillips
Chicago, Illinois
Pentasomnia
Installation, Sculpture, Video Art

Lee Pivnik
Miami, Florida
The Living Room: A Symbiotic Home
Architecture and Design, Ecological Art, Sculpture

Ilana Savdie
Brooklyn, New York
Festejeros
Painting and Printmaking, Installation, Video Art

Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste
Richmond, Virginia
There, Eyes Were Watching
Architecture and Design, Ecological Art, Public Art

Christine Wong Yap
Daly City, California
Bay Windows / Ventanas en saliente / 窗花
Craft, Social Practice, Socially-Engaged Visual Art

Technology

Morehshin Allahyari
Berkeley, California
The Remaining Signs of Future Centuries / نشانه های باقی از سده های آتی
Digital Media, Socially-Engaged Technology

Shayla Blatchford
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Anti-Uranium Mapping Project
Data Visualization, Digital Media, Socially-Engaged Technology

Alice Bucknell
Los Angeles, California
Earth Engine
Data Visualization, Digital Media, Games

Performing Arts

Thana Alexa
Jackson Heights, New York
Resonance
Jazz, Music, Socially-Engaged Performance

Dahlak Brathwaite and Christopher Marianetti
Ridgewood, New York, and Jackson Heights, New York
COMMERCIAL
Multimedia Performance, Music, Theater

Ash Fure
Boston, Massachusetts
ANIMAL [the underground]
Music, Socially-Engaged Performance, Opera

Susie Ibarra
Berlin, Germany
CHAN
Multimedia Performance, Music, Opera

yuniya edi kwon and Holland Andrews
Brooklyn, New York
How does it feel to look at nothing
Multimedia Performance, Music, Opera

Kate Ladenheim
Los Angeles, California
Gestural Publics
Dance, Multimedia Performance

Leilehua Lanzilotti
Honolulu, Hawaiʻi
Lili’u
Opera

Damon Locks
Chicago, Illinois
Live from CPS
Dance, Music, Socially-Engaged Performance

Rashaad Newsome
Oakland, California
I Come As One, But Stand As One Thousand
Dance, Multimedia Performance, Music

Paola Prestini
Brooklyn, New York
Sensorium Ex
Music, Opera, Socially-Engaged Performance

Ashwini Ramaswamy, Aparna Ramaswamy, and Ranee Ramaswamy Minneapolis, Minnesota, and La Cañada Flintridge, California
The Liminal Museum
Dance, Multimedia Performance, Socially-Engaged Performance

Zane Rodulfo
Saint Albans, New York
SHOUTER!
Jazz, Multimedia Performance, Socially-Engaged Performance

Marike Splint
Los Angeles, California
SHOW FULL HISTORY
Multimedia Performance, Theater

Sister Sylvester
New York, New York
Ghost Genes
Multimedia Performance

Takahiro Yamamoto
Portland, Oregon
Hollow Center
Dance, Multimedia Performance

Film/Moving Image

Sophia Nahli Allison
Los Angeles, California
No Kisses Like Youres’
Experimental Film, Narrative Film

Amber Bemak
Dallas, Texas
Cosmic Moose and Grizzly Bears Ville
Documentary Film, Experimental Film

Lori Felker
Chicago, Illinois
Patient
Narrative Film

Ash Goh Hua
Woodhaven, New York
Confinement (坐月)
Narrative Film

Juan Pablo González
Glendale, California
The Measure of Time
Documentary Film

Darol Olu Kae
Los Angeles, California
Without a Song
Narrative Film

Angelo Madsen
Burlington, Vermont
OUT OF ME INTO YOU
Documentary Film, Narrative Film, Experimental Film

Dolissa Medina
Brownsville, Texas
A Light for Ambiguous Loss
Documentary Film, Animation, Experimental Film

Emily Mkrtichian and Kamee Abrahamian
Salt Lake City, Utah, and Demorestville, Ontario, Canada
Portals
Narrative Film

Clyde Petersen
Anacortes, Washington
Our Forbidden Country
Animation

Tshay
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Tell Me When You Get Home.
Animation, Narrative Film

Janelle VanderKelen
Knoxville, Tennessee
The Golden Thread
Animation, Experimental Film

Literature

Thi Bui
New Orleans, Louisiana
NOWHERELAND
Graphic Novel

Harmony Holiday
Los Angeles, California
After the End of the World
Literary Nonfiction, Poetry, Socially-Engaged Literature

Jonah Mixon-Webster
Flint, Michigan
The Hauntology of Slavery
Literary Nonfiction, Poetry, Socially-Engaged Literature

Aaron Robertson
Brooklyn, New York
A Separate Rite
Literary Fiction, Socially-Engaged Literature

Divya Victor
East Lansing, Michigan
Kin
Literary Nonfiction