SMFA at Tufts announces 2020 Traveling Fellows

BOSTON and MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, Mass. (April 28, 2020)—The School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University (SMFA at Tufts) has announced its 2020 class of SMFA at Tufts Traveling Fellows, which includes 10 artists whose distinctive work was judged to be worthy of the prestigious program’s support.

The SMFA Traveling Fellowships provide critical early-career support for SMFA at Tufts alumni, allowing them to further develop and inform their practice. Selected by a jury, SMFA Traveling Fellowship recipients receive up to $10,000 to pursue travel and research related to their art. The application process is open to alumni working in any contemporary visual art discipline.

In existence since 1899 and one of the largest endowed art school grant programs in the United States, this year's fellows will travel to at least 22 sites in 13 countries.

The SMFA Fellows’ travel will begin when travel restrictions and limitations caused by COVID-19 ease.

"Can You Die If You Don't Exist" by Tamara Al-Mashouk, video installation and performance. (Image courtesy of the artist)

The 2020 Traveling Fellows are:

• Tamara Al-Mashouk (MFA '16), of London. Al-Mashouk will travel to Calais, France; Lampedusa, Italy; the Evros River, Greece; and Ceuta, Spain to investigate the intersections between the epigenetics of place, the value of the refugee body and the bureaucracy of immigration systems.
• Alex Buchanan (BFA '14), of New Bedford, Mass. Buchanan will travel to the Azores to find parallels between the culture and historical timelines of the autonomous islands and New England, and to find feminine influences and representations in search of a “Maritime Matriarch.”
• Kate Castelli (MFA ‘13), of Cambridge, Mass. Castelli will travel to the Museo Galileo in Florence, Italy to research printed matter related to graphic cosmology in the museum’s collection of artifacts from the 15th to 19th centuries, including the works of Galileo Galilei.
• Laurence Cuelenaere (MFA ‘18), of Carlisle, Mass. Cuelenaere will travel to Mexico and Guatemala to create a photo installation looking at migration along the Chiapas route to view the migrant journey as a creative enterprise, including along the Usumacinta river where migrants cross to Mexico.
• "The Wink," by Laurence Cuelenaere, photo- sculpture appropriating existing images.  (Image courtesy of the artist)
  Anne Glynnis Fawkes (MFA '99), of Burlington, Vt. Fawkes will travel to France for a residency at La Maison des Auteurs in Angouleme and to Greece and Cyprus to capture in graphic memoir form ancient sites, art and landscapes from a formative time in their personal and professional life.
• Carolyn Funk (BFA '04) of Ridgewood, N.Y. Funk will travel to Villa I Tatti (the Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies) in Florence, Italy to research over 600 letters written to the estate’s former resident, art historian Bernard Berenson, by Belle da Costa Greene from 1909 to 1944.
• Candice Ivy (MFA '06), of Brookline, Mass. Ivy will travel to Ireland and Scotland to gain firsthand experience of various Gaelic cultures to produce a series of sculptural installations embodying the complex relationship between narratives of the feminine and the land.
• Dinora Justice (MFA '14), of Newton, Mass. Justice will travel to Paris and Florence, Italy to research Orientalist paintings of women to explore the role of fantasy in the process of “othering,” and its connection to gender power dynamics and environmental issues.
• Jia-Jen Lin (MFA '07), of Brooklyn, N.Y. Lin will travel to Berlin for a six-month residency at Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, and an expedition around the Svalbard Islands to explore various concepts, including the transformation of abstract experience into visual and performative representations.
• Lomawa Maelane (BFA '19), of Los Angeles. Maelane will travel to Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia and Boston in the practice of AFROTEMPONIKA, a traveling platform and lab of performances, workshops and exhibitions that seeks to build a network of experimental digital artists from Africa and the diaspora.

The jury selecting the 2020 SMFA Traveling Fellowship recipients was composed of Lisa Crossman, curator of Mead Art Museum at Amherst College; Kate McNamara, independent curator and creative director at My HomeCourt; and Andrew Witkin, co-owner and director at Krakow Witkin Gallery.

Notable past winners of the fellowships include Nan Goldin (Dip '77), Ellen Gallagher (Dip '92), Omer Fast (BFA/BA '95), and Mike and Doug Starn (Dip '84), as well as more recent graduates such as Evelyn Rydz (MFA '05), Gonzalo Fuenmayor (MFA '04) and Daniela Rivera (MFA '06).

The Traveling Fellowships is one of many programs at SMFA at Tufts that supports artists in every stage of their careers. For more information, visit https://smfa.tufts.edu/.

###

About the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University

Founded in 1876, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University is a unique art school affiliated with both a major art museum—the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston—and a Tier-1 research university. Originally established within the museum, the school began its relationship with Tufts when the university began providing accredited degrees to SMFA students in 1945. SMFA officially became part of Tufts University’s School of Arts and Sciences in July 2016. SMFA at Tufts provides an exceptional fine arts education that allows students to craft individualized programs of study while being mentored closely by world-renowned faculty and staff. Graduates are creative thinkers and problem-solvers who succeed in a wide variety of careers. SMFA at Tufts is accredited by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design and is a member of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design (AICAD). For more information, visit smfa.tufts.edu/.