2024 AWGC Grantees: Eleven Grants Totaling $88,000 Awarded to Arts & Social Justice Projects
NEW YORK — A multimedia exhibition project marking the 50th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon, a community mural linking poets in New York, Philadelphia and Gaza, and a series of role-playing games designed by and about Asian Pacific Islander Desi American women and girls are among the 11 projects that received grants from the Asian American Giving Circle this year.
“We are thrilled to be throwing our support behind this group of artists and activists who are taking on the grave challenges facing our communities — from racial hate and bias, the crisis in affordable housing, and the struggle to age and die with dignity,” said AWGC co-founder Hali Lee. “These are projects of defiance but also of immense joy, bridging future generations with the groundbreaking legacy of those who came before us.”
Each grantee will receive $8,000 in funds. The 2024 AWGC grantees are:
After Spring Films | “Slumlord Millionaire” Impact Campaign
An impact campaign for “Slumlord Millionaire,” a feature documentary film about tenants fighting back against corrupt landlords and developers in NYC, that will include free community screenings followed by conversation and tenant rights workshops that educate and empower renters to defend themselves against a bad landlord.
Angry Asian Womxn | Art Exhibition and Zine
An art exhibition and zine about the rise in Islamophobia and anti-Asian hate, drawing attention to the similarities in both communities affected by racism and hate. The exhibition will spearhead a series of workshops to teach self defense, safety, and wellness practices for people affected by Islamophobia and anti-Asian racism. This project will feature photographs by Cindy Trinh.
Ar Ducao | The Great Tit is a Bird
A six-part sci-fi multimedia project that follows AAPI and BIPOC feminine and trans-feminine people around the world, the losses they survive, and the ways they shape our high-tech era even as they are pushed to the margins. This transfeminine story explores issues its creators have witnessed firsthand, including techno-colonization, research misconduct, gender-based violence, and threats to body autonomy.
Rohan Zhou-Lee | Blasian March
The annual Blasian Pride celebrates the Black, Asian, and Blasian LGBT community. Through speeches, performance art, collective song, and foods from Black, African, Asian, and their Diaspora cultures, attendees will celebrate these groups often excluded during mainstream Pride on June 22, 2024.
CodeSpeak Foundation | Asian Girl Gamers
A series of storytelling, role-playing games created by Asian Pacific Islander Desi American (APIDA) women educators and students that give players a first-person perspective of the joys and challenges of being APIDA girls and women, from the modern-day Bengali community in NYC to a multigenerational journey through the Cantonese diaspora, featuring Dungeons and Dragons-style game design and online and AI-enabled game tools.
Deepa Purohit – “Mxx/perience: Mother Care”
Part immersive play, installation, “happening,” and discussion circle, Mxx centers the collected experiences of aging women from the South Asian diaspora who engage or disrupt the diasporic rituals and expectations placed on their bodies as they navigate the “machinery” of the medical/elder care industrial complex. How do women age and die with dignity in a culture where the entire medical system is built on this key tenet: to prolong life.
Jess X. Snow, La La Lil Jidar and Farah Barqawi | A People’s Mural for Palestine
A community mural project connecting Philadelphia and New York-based Asian and SWANA poets to youth poets in Gaza through art, poetry and letters; centering feminist and abolitionist visions of liberation across borders. Simultaneously, this project envisions to build a public space to strengthen cross-cultural solidarity, heal in community, organize for mutual aid and lead political education workshops–all toward the future’s Free Palestine.
Mekong NYC | Textile Arts Program
A Bronx-based intergenerational program where Southeast Asian women, girls, and gender non-confirming individuals will learn the history of textile arts in Southeast Asia and in the U.S., facilitate ongoing workshops, create a textile collection, and host a public program launch.
Negin Farsad | “Expanding Bigotryverse”
The comedians behind the 2014 film “The Muslims Are Coming!” revisit America with a 2024 lens. In 2014, Muslims were the bells of the bigotry ball, but 10 years later, they share that moniker with nearly every marginalized group. This film broadens the scope to include comedians from every group that has been targeted — and tries to solve polarization in America, one joke at a time.
Vietnamese Boat People | “Our Journeys: 50 years after the Fall”
A 2025 exhibition project marking the 50th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon, a monumental milestone for Vietnamese people around the world. This project will showcase curated stories, photo and video displays in both a physical and multimedia space. Programming will also include an open call for photographs, a storytelling workshop, and an interactive wall map where visitors can mark their family’s journey on a global map.
Wendy's Subway |“The Quick and the Dead: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha Edition”
A multi-part project that bridges the life, work, and legacy of Korean American artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951–1982) to those of contemporary practitioners. The project considers her profound interventions in film and video, historiography, language, translation, and autobiographical writing through public programming, including the presentation of two artist commissions and a new publication, She Follows No Progression.
ABOUT THE ASIAN WOMEN GIVING CIRCLE
The Asian Women Giving Circle, the first and largest giving circle in the nation led by Asian American women, funds art projects that contribute to cultural and political change created by Asian American women artists and activists in New York City. AWGC is fiscally sponsored by the Ms. Foundation for Women. www.asianwomengivingcircle.org
