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.

  • Magda Fernandez and Dell Marie Hamilton

    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…

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  • Jon Ayon

    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”…

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  • Adriana Corral

    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…

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  • Nicole Marroquin

    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…

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  • Carlos Martiel

    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 …

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  • Las Nietas de Nonó

    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…

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  • Onto

    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…

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  • Aydinaneth Ortiz

    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…

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  • Francena Ottley

    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…

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