For more than a decade, Light Work’s Urban Video Project (UVP) has sponsored an annual invitation-based commission. This year, Light Work has opened our UVP commission to applications for the first time and also created a new commission program specifically for regional artists living within a 50-mile radius of Syracuse. This extends Light Work’s core mission to support emerging and under-represented artists with a focus on service to our community.
It is with great pleasure that we announce that Ithaca-based multimedia artist Paulina Velázquez Solís as the recipient of our first open UVP Regional Commission competition for her proposal entitled Un río de todas las épocas II / A river of all ages II. This project, which will include interactive and performance-based elements, will explore Central New York as a site of “post-industrial natural wonder”. Using regionally extinct species in local herbaria as tools, Velázquez Solís’ work will meditate on the “tension between what prevails and what has shifted or disappeared” in a field of “memory, transformation, and territory”.
Velázquez Solís’ commissioned work will be on view at the UVP architectural projection on the north facade of the Everson Museum of Art in Summer 2024. The artist will receive $3,500 as well as in-kind support from Light Work for the creation of this new work.
Velázquez Solís’ proposal was selected from a field of strong applications by a jury comprising Tara Merenda Nelson, Director of Public Programs at Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, and Cjala Surratt, public relations and outreach professional and co-founder of Syracuse-based organizations the Black Leadership Coalition and Black Artist Collective. Anneka Herre, UVP Program Director, also participated in the jury.
