The Socrates Annual 2023
The Socrates Annual 2023
September 30, 2023 – March 24, 2024
The Artist Fellows
Ashley Harris, Ndivhuho Rasengani, Bat-Ami Rivlin, Kate Rusek*, Maryam Turkey, Stefania Urist
September 30 | 1:30 – 6:30 pm
Opening Celebration
Celebrate the new works with the 2023 Fellows! In conjunction with SkowheganPERFORMS
RELATED EVENTS | ABOUT THE FELLOWSHIP
The Socrates Annual exhibition marks the culmination of the 2023 Socrates Annual Fellowship, which awarded six artists – selected through a competitive open-call application process – with funding, access to the Park’s outdoor studio, and the production support needed to realize ambitious public artworks. The central theme of this year’s exhibition revolves around transformation, echoing the Park’s evolution – from an abandoned landfill to a flourishing gathering space. These five projects reflect on diverse stages of growth, change, and renewal while also invoking a keen understanding of how visitors use this space, informed by the artists’ firsthand experience fabricating these works on-site over the summer. Many of these works are constructed with found and recycled materials that have been ingeniously repurposed, breathing new life into objects that were once discarded or considered undesirable. Collectively, these artists compel us to value the histories embedded in materials and the surrounding landscape. *Kate Rusek is the 2023 Devra Freelander Recipient
The Socrates Annual 2023 is organized by Socrates Sculpture Park and curated by Kaitlin Garcia-Maestas, Curator & Director of Exhibitions.
RELATED EVENTS
Opening Celebration —>
The Socrates Annual 2023
September 30 | 1:30 – 6:30 pm
Celebrate the new works with the 2023 Fellows! The five projects reflect on diverse stages of growth, change, and renewal while also invoking a keen understanding of how visitors use the Park.
SkowheganPERFORMS—>
September 30 | 1:30 – 6:30 pm
A day of new, site-specific performance art by Skowhegan alumni. This event will coincide with the opening of The Socrates Annual 2023.
ABOUT THE FELLOWSHIP
The competitive program reflects the Park’s commitment to artistic experimentation and nurturing artists’ careers. This important training ground for early career artists allows the selected Fellows to gain experience creating large-scale public art, utilizing Socrates’ outdoor studio in Long Island City, Queens. Recipients were selected through an open-call application process. The thematic prompt for this year was “Transformation.”
The Socrates Annual 2023 Artist Fellows were selected from over 250 applicants by a curatorial jury consisting of Misa Jeffereis, Associate Curator at Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, and Sara O’Keeffe, Senior Curator, Art OMI; as well as Kaitlin Garcia-Maestas, Curator & Director of Exhibitions and Tamsin Dillon, former Executive Director at Socrates Sculpture Park. ‘The Socrates Annual’ fellowship was formalized in 2000 and have included artists such as Sable Elyse Smith (2016), David Brooks (2009), Leilah Babirye (2018), Orly Genger (2004), Sanford Biggers (2001), and Torkwase Dyson (2015).
Each Artist Fellow is awarded a $8,000 production grant, $2,000 honorarium, three months of seven-days-a-week access to the resources and fabrication facilities of the Park’s outdoor artist studio to realize their proposed project. Follow along @socratespark to see the Fellows’ projects in progress at Socrates this summer and stayed tuned for more details about the exhibition!
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Support
Major support for The Socrates Annual Fellowship & Exhibition comes from the Jerome Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Additional support is provided by AG Foundation, Charina Foundation, the Sidney E. Frank Foundation, Devra Freelander Artist Fund, Lambent Foundation, and The New York Community Trust, with in-kind support provided by Spacetime C.C.
Additional funding is provided in part, by public funds from the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the New York City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts.
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The free artistic, cultural, and social programming at Socrates Sculpture Park is made possible, in part, by support from Agnes Gund, Charina Endowment Fund, Con Edison, The Cowles Charitable Trust, The Jerome Foundation, Joel Shapiro & Ellen Phelan, Lambent Foundation, Leon Levy Foundation, Maxine & Stuart Frankel Foundation, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, Paula Cooper, Sidney E. Frank Foundation, Spacetime C.C., and our generous Board of Directors.
Socrates’ programs are also supported, in part, by public funds from the Queens Borough President Donovan Richards; the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the New York City Council, the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency; and the National Endowment for the Arts.