2021 Knight Arts + Tech Fellowship – Knight Foundation

2021 Knight Arts + Tech Fellowship

The Knight Arts + Tech Fellowship, administered by United States Artists, seeks to establish new channels of support for artists through unrestricted funding to support their work, while also building a network of practitioners and professionals in the field to new opportunities for collaboration in Knight cities and beyond.

We’re proud to present the 2021 Knight Arts + Tech Fellows––five artists using new and emerging technologies in thoughtful, creative, and poetic ways to expand the field. Each one receives an unrestricted grant of $50,000 each.

This year’s Fellows were selected with the help of a national panel of field leaders composed of Google’s Global Placemaking Lead Josette Melchor, Creative Technologist and Founder of Afrotectopia Ari Melenciano, and Director of NEW INC Stephanie Pereira.

In addition to the Fellowship, the Knight Foundation has created a new web-based publication exploring new media landscapes and spotlighting the inaugural Knight Arts + Tech Fellows. 

Titled Shift Space, the slate of essays features stories about the Fellows in this year’s cohort as well as writings on the still-emerging and constantly-evolving field at large. Guest edited by artist and researcher Salome Asega, and produced by United States Artists, Shift Space is available at shiftspace.pub.

Meet the 2021 fellows

Black Quantum Futurism

Black Quantum Futurism

Philadelphia, PA

Black Quantum Futurism is an interdisciplinary creative practice between Camae Ayewa and Rasheedah Phillips exploring the intersections of futurism, creative media, DIY aesthetics and activism in marginalized communities through an alternative temporal lens. Their  work focuses on the recovery, collection and preservation of communal memories, histories, and futures. Black Quantum Futurism has produced a number of experimental music projects, exhibitions, writing, films, performances, and community-based events, including the award-winning Community Futures Lab. See more of Black Quantum Futurism’s work HERE

Rashaad Newsome

Rashaad Newsome

Oakland, CA

Rashaad Newsome draws from diasporic traditions of improvisation, advertising and the internet, art history, and Black and queer culture to produce counter-hegemonic work that walks the tightrope between creative computing, social practice, abstraction, and intersectionality. Collage acts as a theoretical, conceptual, and technical method to construct a new cultural framework of power that celebrates Black contributions to the art canon and creates innovative and inclusive forms of culture and media. See more of Rashaad Newsome’s work HERE

Rodolfo Peraza

Rodolfo Peraza

Miami, FL

Rodolfo Peraza is a Cuban-born multimedia artist whose work focuses on public spaces, both virtual and physical. In 2009, Peraza founded Fanguito Estudio in Havana, and in 2013, he launched the VRLab for the development of browser-based VR technology. In 2016, Peraza created MUD Foundation to advance the intersections between art and digital technologies by implementing artistic and educational programs.​ See more of Rodolfo Peraza’s work HERE

Sondra Perry

Sondra Perry

Newark, NJ

Sondra Perry makes videos, performances, and installations that foreground digital tools as a way to critically reflect on new technologies of representation and remobilize their potential. Her works examine how images are produced in order to reveal the way photographic representations are captured and re-circulated. Perry was born in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, raised in New Jersey and North Texas, and has lived and worked in Newark, New Jersey since 2019. She received her MFA from Columbia University in 2015 and her BFA from Alfred University in 2012. See more of Sondra Perry’s work HERE

Stephanie Dinkins

Stephanie Dinkins

Brooklyn, NY

Stephanie Dinkins is a transmedia artist who creates platforms for dialogue about race, gender, aging, and our future histories. Dinkins’ art practice employs emerging technologies, documentary practices, and social collaboration toward equity and community sovereignty. She is particularly driven to work with communities of color to co-create more equitable, values grounded social and technological ecosystems. See more of Stephanie Dinkins’ work HERE


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