The Charla Fund
The CHARLA Fund, part of the Mazorca Initiative, offers a flexible and open-ended format that enables artist-recipients to have creative, challenging, supportive, and unconventional conversations with fellow artists and other artworkers and between the field of visual art and other disciplines.
For the initiative’s first round, proposals were solicited by nomination from arts leaders located across the United States and Puerto Rico. Proposals were then selected based on the recommendations of an external advisory board comprising world-class artists, scholars, and curators who share a commitment to enhancing equity in the art world and represent a range of perspectives based on their diverse art practices, areas of specializations, racial and ethnic backgrounds, and regions they live and work.
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Magda Fernandez and Dell Marie Hamilton
CHARLA: Bending the Archive “Bending the Archive” is a pre-recorded performative video of a zoom charla between close friends, artists Magda Fernandez and Dell M. Hamilton, on how archives inform their respective practices and Latinx identities. For several years, Fernandez and Hamilton have participated in an artist group text, and have bared much about the repercussions that have resulted from sharing a history of European colonialism in their respective Cuban (Fernandez) and Belizean/Honduran (Hamilton) family histories. In Fernandez’s case, most of her ancestors were the colonizers, and in Hamilton’s, the colonized. In “Bending the Archive,” Fernandez and Hamilton will reprise…
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Jon Ayon
CHARLA: Art Activism vs. Art Egoism In Why I Write, George Orwell claims that the “four great motives for writing” in every writer are sheer egoism, aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse, and political purpose. In the current sociopolitical landscape, many young artists are motivated to create art that creates change but when is “Social Justice Art” activism and when is it egoism? Art Activism vs. Art Egoism is an in-person or virtual discourse that mimics a happy hour conversation among artists who share a desire to further bend our society and “the arc of the moral universe,” as Dr. King says,…
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Adriana Corral
CHARLA: Requiem The proposed CHARLA is a one hour zoom conversation between Adriana Corral, Vincent Valdez, and Adriana Zavala. This discussion focuses on the collaborative site-specific installation Requiem, created by Vincent and Adriana (Corral). The piece debuted in the exhibition Suffering From Realness, at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts in 2019–2020. The conversation will unpack the various layers of the three-year project. Beginning with the inception of the work and how it connects to our current social/political climate, fabrication, site-specificity, procession performance, the significance behind the dates/texts submitted and the time capsule embedded inside of the bronzed eagle. This…
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Nicole Marroquin
Bio Nicole Marroquin is a teacher educator and an artist whose work explores belonging and spatial justice. She researches student uprisings in Chicago Public Schools and queer Chicanx public memory with the goal of recuperating the history of youth and women’s leadership in the struggle for justice. She has recently presented projects at the Kochi Biennale, University of Illinois, Columbia College, DePaul University, UMaine, UPitt, Loyola and the Jane Addams Hull House Museum. In 2019 she was granted awards from 3Arts for the AR history project Raising an Invisible Monument and from Propeller Fund for the collaborative project Asociación communitaria…
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Carlos Martiel
CHARLA: Arte, performance y política con Carlos Martiel A conversation about the artist’s most important performances, visceral political critiques, addressing contemporary issues related to censorship, oppression, and immigration. Carlos Martiel, building on Cuban and international histories, comments on social tensions while both embodying and challenging commonly perceived limits of the body. The facilitator of the CHARLA will be Jorge Sánchez, poet, photographer, and curator. He recently completed the Independent Study Program at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona (MACBA) and is pursuing a Masters of Arts (MFA) in Creative Writing in Spanish at New York University. He lives between Puerto…
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Las Nietas de Nonó
CHARLA: Alimentos de Poder Recognizing and honoring the interconnected relationship between memory and food, we are urged to explore in an intimate conversation: What transformations associated with food and spirituality have been challenging as Black Caribbeans in a colonial context? How do we imagine the decolonization of food in our communities of origin? What strategies do we move forward to gain food sovereignty? What role does art play in this scenario? We will be having conversations with Eliazar Ortiz, conducted through handwritten letters sent via postal service. Bio The sisters, mulowayi and mapenzi are Las Nietas de Nonó. Their artistic…
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Onto
CHARLA: ONTO Puesta en Circulación Pub 2: Arte y Capital + Conversatorio It will be our third issue’s release party with a public conversation between the co-editors David Puig (Ediciones De A Poco), Julianny Ariza Vólquez and José Morbán (ONTO), moderated by Maurice Sánchez from the Pardo editorial platform. This number deals with the relation between money and art communities in the Caribbean, composed of interviews to gallerists, fair directors and independent space managers. Also essays about artists pensions, self-managing and alternative practices of art production. This issue compiles opinions and experiences of artists, curators and other cultural agents around…
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Aydinaneth Ortiz
CHARLA: Make Work About Your Truth Make work about your truth was a Charla between Alejandro Sanchez, Aydinaneth Ortiz, Karina Esperanza Yanez, Marlene Tafoya, and Juan Valenzuela. The group set out to have an open and honest conversation as if they were speaking amongst friends. Discussing the impact art had on their lives, some of the challenges of being an artist, and their experiences as educators within art. During the Charla, they spoke about the need for systemic change and artists working alongside the community. Closing out the conversation with advice for the future generation of artists. Bio Aydinaneth Ortiz…
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Francena Ottley
CHARLA: The Birth of A Black Mother Motherhood is so challenging yet so beautiful. Being a new mom and trying to navigate through the ins and outs of what is expected of me as a mom but also the pressure that comes from social media and family is often difficult. Adding on motherhood during a pandemic and dealing with prenatal, birth, and the unspoken fourth trimester/postpartum can come with many challenges. The pressure around breastfeeding versus formula feeding. Dealing with prenatal and/or postpartum depression. The relationship between a mother and child. How to balance being an artist and a mom,…
