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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Vick Quezada
CHARLA: Relics of an Inquisition Is an art show and talk about the works by Vick Quezada. The works queer the archaeological through hybrid forms and aesthetics. Inspired by the guiding principles of Aztec Philosophy, Quezada integrates the theory of interconnected matter and how it’s embedded in the cosmos, planet earth, ecology, and all lifeforms. Through Rasquache art, ceramics and drawings Quezada forwards their beliefs that humans, biological matter cannot be governed by sovereign powers as they are inherently queer and infinte. Bio Vick Quezada (they/them) was raised in El Paso, TX along the U.S/Mexico Border. Quezada received a BA from UTEP and graduated…
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Evelyn Rydz
CHARLA: Recetas de Casa, a healing recipe exchange from and about home In this multi-generational event, participants will exchange recipes and stories about the people, places, and food that form their connections to home. Participants will gather online to share the dishes they are creating to bring comfort, nourishment, and healing during these challenging and uncertain times. Recipes and excerpts of stories will be compiled into a digital cookbook and shared with all participants. Recetas de Casa is an online component of Comida Casera, a multigenerational project using food and storytelling to cultivate community transcending borders and divides. The project centers on traditions relocated…
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Daisy Quezada Ureña
CHARLA: Untitled (Accumulation) This project intends to amplify conversation through sculpting clay forms that reflect a presence in New Mexico’s social and cultural spaces, in dialogue with the national. Engaging with the youth across underrepresented areas of Northern New Mexico and immersing our hands in earth, we seek innovative knowledge that reflects and hopes to transform. Select themes explore what truth was found in the self during the time of COVID. The final works will be displayed across libraries in the surrounding communities. Bio Daisy Quezada Ureña is a visual artist and educator based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Within…
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Lionel Cruet
CHARLA: banasta: residencia artística banasta: artistic residency, is a program organized by artists and cultural managers aimed to generate a healthy and safe community of creators in the arts, within the Puerto Rican and NYC context in dialogue with the artistic scene abroad.
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Angel Lartigue
CHARLA: Cenote A conversation between visual artists Angel Lartigue, Tere Garcia and poets Matt Flores and Roberto Tejada on the recent artistic project, Cenote, a hybrid of art residency, collective and network based within the Texas town of Falfurrias. The conversation addresses issues of migration, the relationship between archaeology and forensics, and humanitarian work with the South Texas Human Rights Center. Visual video graphics by Hoçâ Cové-Mbede. Bio Angel Lartigue is an artistic researcher born and raised in Houston Texas. Lartigue’s work explores the relationship between the body and land through the use of “putrefaction” matter as raw material. This…
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Kasey-Lynn Rodriguez
CHARLA: Parenting/Aesthetic My Charla proposal was to explore other parents who are creatives and how they balance the way they live, work and take care of their children. I spoke to Brian “B*Star” Ramos through a Zoom call about our different backgrounds and mediums to discuss what parenting looks like and how we can use a little more kindness from society and ourselves. I wanted to create and honor a space for us to be open and honest with ourselves and others about the real experiences of parenthood. Many times, we hide the real story and blanket it with “parenting…
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Cynthia Velásquez
CHARLA: Hit Me Up I partnered with Chicanx artist, Aarum Alatorre of Pacoima Techno, in a performance piece that centers on belonging, discomfort, and adjusting to post-art school life. Our living performance piece takes the shape of a phone call accompanied with visuals (foto and film). Our aim is to share our deep friendship that serves as a strong foundation to examine our concerns on Latinx Art inclusion and recognition in the art world. As Latinx brown artists making a living off of our art while remaining insistent on being included in the art world raises complicated feelings around being…
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Salvador Jiménez-Flores and Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy
CHARLA: Conversation about Collaboration In this charla between Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy and Salvador Jimenez-Flores, they chat about visibility, representation, education, mentorship, and the importance of creatives being fairly compensated in art spaces. Angelik and Salvador have collaborated on many projects including multiple exhibitions that aim to celebrate BIPOC artists working in ceramics. For example,Sleight of Handbrought together artists together whose work embodies the themes of and aesthetics of Funk art, highlighting the clay medium as a tool of social and political critique and resistance. Last year, Angelik invited Salvador to be a guest on her podcast Clay in Color where they…
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Stephanie Concepcion Ramirez
CHARLA: flowers flowers is a single-channel video constructed of conversations happening with the self and shared between two artists. An inner dialogue of these two artists working, making, feeling, experiencing, thinking and living in the world today. These audio recordings were recorded in a month’s time span and shared with one another without edits or cuts in hopes to open up about concerns, thoughts, hopes, dreams and fears and not hear responses back, but instead to allow these words to be released, heard and exist without judgment. With the inner dialogue being the most important voice in our practices as…
