Antenna Open Call Selections for 2019
Antenna is excited to announce all of our 2019 selections from our open call programs. These processes are always challenging, because we get SO MANY great applications both locally and from around the globe, and we never have enough spots for the amount of great folks that apply. This year we have some really great projects which we get to help bring to life, so without further ado:
Allison Leialoha Milham will continue work on a project that was started in the Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park, developing a small artist book edition that will accompany a 7” vinyl record of her original songs exploring her journey through the grief following the loss of mother last year. Drawing on indigenous ways of knowing and Native Hawaiian spirituality, the project explores the transformation and healing that’s possible in the face of great loss.
Marta Rodriguez Maleck is a multi-disciplinary artist based in New Orleans and will work with Paper Machine throughout the year to develop several book projects in support of her “Take an Apology, Leave an Apology” project, using 700 participant interactions as source material for the books.
Antenna Exhibition Open Calls
The Antenna exhibition open calls give local and international/national artists the opportunity to produce a fully funded exhibition in Antenna Gallery, 3718 Saint Claude Ave. Only 2 exhibitions are selected in this highly competitive opportunity.
This year, of 47 applicants, juror Jackie Clay, curator and executive director of the Coleman Center for the Arts, selected Juliana Kasumu as this year’s local open call winner. Of the local open call process, Jackie Clay had this to say:
“What is the proposition that is a regional open call? Are applicants supposed to reflect or do they represent their place? And what is the role of the institution? The juror? Jurors write about practice, about representation, and about place. I am from Alabama, a state with more folks, less money, and an identity amber-encased. Louisiana’s got more prisoners (but not more prisons). Still this state is a destination. A site folks have moved toward, not always away. It’s a place people can assemble, characterized in a series of phrases, gestures, and flavors.
The works submitted in this year’s Antenna::Open Call for Louisiana Artists vary in scale and material. Some are conceptually grounded; others pressed materiality. Artists made work to organize around and make revolution. They considered creative practice while parenting and they sampled–from Sabrina the Teenage Witch to Gifted Hands. While grounded in the state, applicants brought global perspective. They are weavers, painters, textile artists, photographers, students, ceramicists, and educators.
Juliana Kasumu’s work captures a medley of gendered space, geographical place, and bent time. Kasumu masterfully lights portraits, exterior, and interior scenes. More than pretty, those insides – courtyards and style shops – record the emotional resonance of warm, complicated space. Kasumu’s rooms are filled with whispers, taut scalps, but lamps emollient. The artist appreciates the social and revelatory function of photography; per their statement they both document and seek to create sites for collectivity. In doing so Kasumu continues Antenna’s and other regional organizers tradition of making together.”
We would also like to recognize local applicants John Alleyne, Kevin Benham, William DePauw, Marta Rodriguez Malek, Dorothy McGuiness, and Jose Torres-Tama who were a part of this year’s shortlist of local applicants.
The Antenna gallery collective selected Macon Reed amongst a pool of 252 applicants (our most ever!) from across the globe for the International/National Exhibition Open Call, as well as Tracey Bullington, Sarah Welch, Max Seckel for exhibitions in Antenna’s Reading Room.
Every year, Antenna selects a handful of projects to produce in its ongoing Guidebook, Chapbook, and Graphic Novel series, for 2019 from a total of 40 applicants, these projects were selected:
Collection of Collections: Kurston Melton & Jeremy Paten will produce Seeds from The Middle Passage: Transatlantic Slave Trade to Louisiana
Photographer Lily Brooks will produce Bonnet Carré: A Guidebook
Baton Rouge based artist Scott Finch will produce a graphic novel entitled Domesticated Afterlife.
New Orleans based poet Skye Jackson will produce her first chapbook: i bet you think this poem is about (you).
If you feel inspired to apply to any of these opportunities, visit Antenna’s submittable page to apply today: https://antenna.submittable.com/submit
