Matching CARES Act Relief Funds to Support BIPOC Artists:
A grant and prompt for collective action
Co-Lab Projects has selected two BIPOC artists to receive grants in the amounts of $1,362 (an equivalent match to the amount we received from the CARES Act) and $500 (an amount provided by Annette Carlozzi and Dan Bullock). This grant reflects the conversations and efforts we’ve been engaged in as an organization for some time and is the modest beginning of an ongoing financial aid program to support artists of color that we will continue to develop and grow as funds become available.
Mónica Teresa Ortiz
Photo by Itzel Alejandra, taken in front of Nepantla USA (2019)
Born and raised in the Texas Panhandle, mónica teresa ortiz is a poet and writer who explores the relationships between necropolitics, geopolitics, and history. Since childhood, they have been fascinated by the alienation experienced through land and language, and how that translates into the violence we've witnessed over the past 30 years. What might appear as dystopian is actually a hopeful imaginative of our future, marked by current events and shaped by our past. ortiz's work acts as a record, as an act of protest, and a history of the United States, transformed through a critical practice focused on our epoch and their experiences as a Queer Mexican born and raised in the South. They are the author of muted blood, published by Black Radish Books in 2018, and winner of the inaugural Host Publications Chapbook Prize for autobiography of a semiromantic anarchist, published in 2019. They have forthcoming work in the Brooklyn Review, the Texas Observer, and are a featured poet with City of Asylum's Jazz Poetry Festival (2020). ortiz also has had collaborations with NYC based production collective, Tierra Narrative, as well as forthcoming with Libromobile. Funds provided by Co-Lab projects will help ortiz complete a writing residency to focus on their upcoming book Birds at a Funeral as well as afford the cost of the book's completion and curate a zine featuring BIPOC poets of the South.
Read Mónica's recent poems here
Quyen Nguyen
Quyen Nguyen is a filmmaker, performer, and student currently finishing their degree at UT Austin. Quyen works as a director of operations for an agency that creates events for queer & trans people of color such as Drag Ball 2019, Defining Womanhood, Vogue 101, and more. They have directed and produced multiple music videos and short films and recently finished their first live stream performance show, Bloq Party 2020, featuring queer performers of color. Quyen has been part of the Austin creative community for four years and hopes to stay in the city in order to push creative and social change for marginalized communities. Currently underemployed from the loss of their nightlife job and unable to perform drag during COVID, Quyen will use the funds provided by Co-Lab Projects to help pay their bills and afford groceries until they can resume full-time employment and get back to making films. They also hope to afford materials and a new camera for upcoming projects if their budget allows.
Watch Quyen's films here