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2024 Corrina Mehiel Fellows Announced

We’re thrilled to announce our 2024 Corrina Mehiel Fellows: Nancy Nowacek, Anna Tsouhlarakis, and Naoco Wowsugi!

Our Corrina Mehiel Fellowship supports visionary artists with an unrestricted $10K grant and generative fellowship opportunities with the S.O.U.R.C.E. Studio network and artist Mel Chin. The Fellowship is not project driven; the purpose, rather, is to support artists with financial resources and camaraderie, allowing time and space for an artist to develop ideas, research and for opportunities to arise. Participation is individualized, intimate, and collaborative where experimenting, mutual exchange, and learning is prioritized.

Awardees are nominated and selected by a distinguished group of former fellows, curators, artists, and culture makers. The nomination and application process is led by SOURCE, with participants being compensated for their time. The 2024 Corrina Mehiel Fellow selection committee included: Risa Puleo, curator; Prerana Reddy, cultural producer; Amy Rosenblum-Martín, curator; brontë velez, artist and 2022 Corrina Mehiel Fellow; and Amanda Wiles, director SOURCE Studio.

Click the bios below to learn more about each fellow and follow us on Instagram to keep up with our  summer gatherings, reflections, and more!

Photo by Eva Cruz
Meet Anna: (she/her) Art has always been a presence in my life and over time I found myself asking questions about what Native artists were making and why. There are certain perceptions and expectations that confine Native American Art. I am interested in challenging and stretching the boundaries of aesthetic and conceptual expectations to reclaim and rewrite Native definitions of making through sculpture, video, performance, photography, and installation. Using Indigenous epistemologies and pedagogies as starting points, my work reframes the discourse around the construction of Native American identity. While my practice is more conceptually based, the foundation of it is in Indigenous philosophies and beliefs. While many of the issues I engage are serious and historically based, there is an underlying thread of unstable humor and sarcasm that connect much of my work. I challenge status quo narratives and create an approach that celebrates the questioning and reformation of Native power, specifically Native female power and fierceness.
Photo by Tom Brümmer
Meet Nancy: (she/they) I am an interdisciplinary artist interested in social infrastructures. I make installations, sculptures, drawings, photographs, video, sound, and participatory works to activate social change. These works are often site-specific and employ writing, typography, symbolic languages, images, and/or found objects as material. A background in design informs the problem-seeking nature of my process and the visual quality of my work. My practice is research-based and multi-modal: I go out into the world to ask others about their expertise or experiences, travel to observe the topic in the world, map systems and power structures, and draw, write, sculpt, perform, photograph, and capture video. In projects, I function as a collector, translator, futurist, collaborator, facilitator, and director. I have explored a range of urgent issues in my work— American politics, climate change, chronic illness, menopause, ageism, and mental health—and often employ social forms (a pop-up gift shop, a demolition derby) to create an alternate reality or new imaginary that invite others to question the status quo and visualize new possibilities. I often work in social and public contexts because I believe in the critical importance of public space, the public sphere, public art, and being with and for others.

Meet Naoco: (all pronouns welcome) I am a community-engaged artist who blurs the lines between being an artist and an engaged citizen. As a first-generation immigrant living and working in Washington, DC, my cross-disciplinary projects—including portrait photography, participatory performance, sound healing, and horticulture—explore the nature of belonging and inclusive community building.

In recent years, I have closely collaborated with hyperlocal communities. Inspired by the ideas of bioregionalism, which examines how nature affects the livelihood and the relationships among local cultures and people, my projects highlight and fortify everyday communal and interpersonal identities.

My creative journey lends them a critical gaze as both an artist examining their work and as a person considering the complexities of living in the world today, valuing them socially and ontologically.