Helga Davis is a vocalist and performance artist with feet planted on the most prestigious international stages and with firm roots in the realities and concerns of her local community whose work draws out insights that illuminate how artistic leaps for an individual can offer connection among audiences. Davis was principal actor in the 25th-anniversary international revival of Robert Wilson and Philip Glass’s seminal opera Einstein on the Beach. She also starred in Wilson’s The Temptation of St. Anthony, with libretto and score by Bernice Johnson Reagon. Among the collaborative and works written for her are Oceanic Verses by Paola Prestini, You Us We All by Shara Nova and Andrew Ondrejcak and Yet Unheard, a tribute to Sandra Bland by Courtney Bryan, based on the poem by Sharan Strange. She has conceived and performed First Responder and Wanna as responses to Until and The Let Go by multidisciplinary artist Nick Cave. She is artist in residence at National Sawdust and Joe’s Pub, host of the eponymous podcast HELGA on WQXR, winner of the 2019 Greenfield Prize in composition, a 2019 Alpert Award finalist, and the 2018–21 visiting curator for the performing arts at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

Rebekah Crisanta de Ybarra a.k.a. Lady Xøk (Maya-Lenca tribal citizen) is a Twin Cities-based multi/interdisciplinary artist, musician, and culture bearer whose work is rooted in Indigenous Futurisms. Performing as Lady Xøk, she creates multimedia light and shadow installations for immersive experimental storytelling mixing electric and Mesoamerican instruments. She co-founded Electric Machete Studios, a Latinx Art + Music cultural production house. Past works include Dimensions of Indigenous in 2016 at Intermedia Arts; Petroglyphs and Borders as part of the inaugural 2018 artist-in-residence at The M–Minnesota Museum of American Art; Star Girl Clan in 2018 at In the Heart of the Beast PuppetLab Fellow; Decolonial Maya Constellation Maps in 2019 at Minnesota Center for Book Arts as part of the Jerome Mentorship Fellow; and ongoing installation performances developed in part by Redeye Theatre, New Native Theatre, Monkeybear’s Harmolodic Workshop, Catalyst Arts, ArtShanty and current residency with New York-based theatre La MaMa. www.rebekahcrisanta.com

Fellowship Statement

My experimental interdisciplinary social practice (visual art, music, theatre, dance, literature, and puppetry) seeks to shift consciousness around immigration, borders, exodus and interconnectedness of Indigenous Peoples of the Americas and shared and erased ancient histories of collective liberation. Rooted in Indigenous Futurisms, Lenca cosmovision of Managuara, Latinx artesenias of Mesoamerica, and liberation theology of El Salvador, I am interested in the intersection of Low Art, High Art and the Nepantla in-between spaces where God, ancestors, timelessness, and dreams live. I explore the threads of connection between the seen and unseen worlds. I work from a generative space of meditation, ancestor whispers, play, and somatic response. I use transdisciplinary methods to reconstruct into living form Lenca archeology, to document and reimagine my people’s unwritten ancient history for a new future where Central Americans in exodus, First Americans, have a basic human right to migration on Turtle Island, a land travelled for millennia.

Photo by Valerie Oliviero

Delina White is a Native apparel designer, beadwork artist and Indigenous materials jewelry maker. She is a member of the Pillager Band of Minnesota Chippewa and resides on the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota. She mixes traditionally indigenous materials with her original designed fabrics, including fabrics from around the world found among the woodland peoples through centuries of trade. She uses her art to communicate the values and beliefs of the Anishinaabeg, as an intergenerational cultural knowledge learner from her grandmother. Delina was recognized as one of Six MN Star Tribune’s 2019 Artists of the Year, for her work with the Hearts of Our People, a landmark exhibition as the first major thematic show to explore the artistic achievements of Native women. Her Woodland Scarf placed 2nd in USA Today’s “10 Splurge-worthy Gifts of 2020,” and was named, “2020 Artist in Business Leadership Fellow” by the First Peoples Fund.

Fellowship Statement

Artists provide inspiration to make change, protect, and thrive in a better world. I use fashion as a narrative to assert rights for equity, protect our sacred sites and environment, and to show cultural pride as sovereign nations. We all use fashion to make a declaration of opinion, attitudes and outlook on life. My goal is to continue advocating the importance of arts programming throughout Minnesota and beyond, to tap into the talents and grow business skills of Native artists and work with families engaging the youth in creative placemaking for better, healthier communities. It is my responsibility to preserve the ancestral knowledge and share to advance what artists envisions for themselves and our communities. This fellowship will provide support that will allow me to study apparel as a catalyst to wider approaches of learning, research and creative exploration to truly become an asset of my community and nation.

Photo by Ivy Vainio

Witt Siasoco (he/him) is a community-based visual artist living and working in Minneapolis, MN. His work actively engages the intersection of the arts and civic process through a variety of roles—as artist, graphic designer, and arts educator.

In recent years Siasoco was awarded a Minnesota State Arts Board Arts Access grant and the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council’s Next Step Fund. He has had residencies at the Kulture Club Collaborative, Pillsbury House and Theater, and Minnesota Museum of American Art. Siasoco was selected as a CreativeCitymaking artist, a collaboration between artists and urban planners to develop innovative approaches for addressing the long-term transportation, land use, economic, environmental, and social issues facing Minneapolis.

Fellowship Statement

My studio practice is rooted in creating art in public space that catalyzes civic dialogue and collective action. Throughout my career, I have created many community-engaged projects including This Home is Not for Sale, a collaboration with Poetry for People and recipient of an Americans for the Arts' Public Art Award; Drawing on Rice Street, a large-scale painting installation distilling over 200 conversations with Frogtown residents; and Carry On Homes Northeast, an installation focused on immigrant participation in the Census 2020. With my experience as a public artist and lifelong skater I brought together Juxtaposition Arts and City of Skate to create JXTA's Skateable Art Plaza, a youth designed, multi-purpose public space in North Minneapolis. Recently, I finished a large-scale mural for the Creative Enterprise Zone and created a new work for the City of Minneapolis’ Public Service Center.

Photo by Dan Huseby