New York, NY – May 12, 2019 – The Pollock-Krasner Foundation has awarded Nsenga Knight a $20,000 grant during its 2018-2019 grant cycle. This year’s grantees and award recipients include artists from 18 states, Puerto Rico, and 17 countries. During its 2018-2019 grant cycle the Pollock-Krasner Foundation has awarded $3,168,000 to 111 artists and 12 organizations . The 124 grants provided invaluable support to national and international artists and not-for-profit organizations. These highly competitive grants provide critical professional support to artists around the globe, enabling them to create new work, offset living expenses, and prepare for exhibitions. The Foundation has also provided Emergency Relief Grants to artists affected by recent hurricanes and California wildfires. Since its inception in 1985, the Foundation has awarded more than 4,510 grants in 77 countries, for a total of nearly $74 million.
With the support of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant Knight will complete a series of text-based paintings entitled Tawaf/ Sa’y and two large bodies of abstract print works—the Plateau and Chicken Scratch series. Her interdisciplinary work spans photography, printmaking, painting, drawing, installation and social practice. Unfolding across these media, and informed by her upbringing as a first-generation Black American Muslim woman, her work synthesizes influences from Islamic art, Western abstraction, and Black aesthetics.
“At the core of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation’s mission is fostering the work and development of artists, and our 2018-19 grant and award recipients highlight the impact we can have due to Lee Krasner’s legacy,” said Ronald D. Spencer, Chairman and CEO of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. “In addition, through our support of institutions such as the Barbican Centre and their upcoming Lee Krasner retrospective and catalogue, and the Katonah Museum of Art’s exhibition of the work of Krasner and other women artists who participated in the groundbreaking 9th Street Show, we are continuing to advance much-needed scholarship.”
ABOUT NSENGA KNIGHT
Nsenga Knight was born in 1981 in Brooklyn, New York. She currently lives and works in Cairo, Egypt and New York. She has exhibited work at the Drawing Center, New York, NY; Arthur Ross Gallery at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; Project Rowhouses, Houston, TX; Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College, Pennsylvania; Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY; Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art, Brooklyn, NY; Amistad Gallery at the University of Pennsylvania, New Museum for Contemporary Art, New York, NY; PS1 MoMA among others.
Knight has held artist residencies at Elsewhere Museum in Greensboro, North Carolina, the Galveston Artist Residency in Galveston, Texas, Brandywine Workshop in Philadelphia, Film/Video Arts Center in New York, and was a BCAT/ Rotunda Gallery Multimedia Artist in Resident in Brooklyn, NY. She was most recently a recipient of a Foundation for Contemporary Arts grant, and a recipient of a Durham Arts Council grant, Southern Constellations Fellowship, the Leeway Foundation Art and Change Grant, and Brooklyn Arts Council grants. From 2016-2017 Knight was an Open Sessions artist in resident at the Drawing Center in New York. She earned a Masters of Fine Arts degree at the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Arts in Film Production at Howard University.
ABOUT POLLOCK-KRASNER FOUNDATION
The Pollock-Krasner Foundation was established in 1985 through the generosity of Lee Krasner, a leading abstraction expressionist painter and spouse of Jackson Pollock. Based in New York and operating internationally, the Foundation’s grants enable artists to advance their practice. Recipients of Pollock-Krasner grants have noted the generous and critical impact of this funding in allowing concentrated time to work in the studio and prepare for exhibitions.
To provide additional support to its grantees, the Foundation maintains an up to date and comprehensive Grantee Image Collection representing the work of artists who have received grants since 1985. For more information, including guidelines for grant applications, visit the Foundation’s website: http://www.pkf.org.
That’s also how I’ve kept my artistic practice going for my first two years of being a mom. That’s how I’m writing this blog post too. Time is precious and it has to be directed towards achieving important goals. Becoming a parent has made me ask myself what more can I do through my artistic practice to impact the lives of other people and constantly create work that addresses the issues that matter to me.
a bangin 19th century apartment, a generous stipend and a beach bicycle to boot! Eric Schnell, the Founder/ Director of the residency is also an artist and he was so open and eager to make the residency a success by doing whatever was in his capability to support us in our artistic practice (God bless that man – such a genuine, generous and kind soul). I felt wonderfully supported and it seemed anything was possible. This time of in my life laid an important foundation for me. I even got married while I was an artist in residence at GAR. I was winning ALL the way! SO much of the work I’ve done over the past five years began in Galveston.
Houston is being really good to me this year. Can’t wait to get some Island Time in for the weekend (inshaAllah).