Assets for Artists is thrilled to announce the latest group of ten artists to join our Massachusetts Statewide Capacity-Building cohort! Scroll down to meet them and hear their goals for the program.
Over the next year, each of our new grantees—both emerging and established artists—will take professional development workshops with A4A and invest their grant funds in the sustainable future of their creative practices. We’re excited to see what they accomplish!
Yasmine Ameli
Iranian American poet and essayist Yasmine Ameli (Shrewsbury) composes work grounded in familial storytelling, national mythology, immigration trauma, and hybrid racial and ethnic identity. One of her recent projects is a mixed-genre memoir of her coming-of-age as a queer biracial Iranian American woman under the shadow of the military industrial complex and the forty-year Cold War between the U.S. and Iran. Yasmine’s writing has been published or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Narrative, The Rumpus, Shenandoah, and Nimrod. She received her MFA in poetry from Virginia Tech, was a finalist for Narrative’s 2020 Twelfth Annual Poetry Contest and Shenandoah’s Graybeal-Gowen Prize for Virginia Poets, and she was a semifinalist for Nimrod’s 2020 Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. Her goals during the A4A Capacity-Building Program include developing a website and marketing plan and submitting work to new journals.
Gohar Dashti
For the past 16 years Iranian artist Gohar Dashti (Cambridge) has been making large-scale photography with a particular focus on social issues. Her work references history and contemporary culture, as well as the convergence of anthropological and sociological perspectives. Employing a unique, quasi-theatrical aesthetic, she brings to bear a diverse intellectual and cultural experience to illuminate and elaborate upon her perception of the world around her. In her most recent works, Gohar has explored, through her highly stylized, densely poetic observations of human and plant life, the innate kinship between the natural world and human migrations. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Smithsonian Museum, Washington D.C., among many others. During her time in the A4A Capacity-Building Program, Gohar aims to research for artist fellowships and connect with artists across the state.
Photo credit: Jo Chattman
Kimaya Diggs
Musician, performer, and teaching artist Kimaya Diggs (Easthampton) is classically trained in opera, piano, and cello, and has studied jazz and polyphonic music traditions from all around the world, spanning 21 distinct styles and 27 languages. In 2018, she released her debut album, Breastfed, which has been described as a “bittersweet chronicle of growth toward the light. Recklessly urgent, irreverent and defiant in the face of the past.” She’s written lyrics, opera libretti, music for theatre, prose, and poetry, the last of which earned her a Callalloo Fellowship. Her current work centers around original folk/soul compositions, and she’s recording her second full-length album. During the A4A Capacity-Building Program, she will focus on producing high quality videos of songs and performances for digital and social use, while concerts and gatherings remain restricted.
Bithyah Israel
A Boston native raised in San Diego, Bithyah Israel (Roxbury) has played cello for 30 years. She has composed and arranged music and acted in Boston-area theatrical productions. In 2012 she founded a youth-centered cello program, City Strings United, which she continues to direct. She is a member of the Celebrity Series Community Engagement Committee, Boston International Film Festival, Massachusetts Production Coalition, and recently scored two graduate student films. In 2016 she received a teaching artist fellowship through the Mass Cultural Council. Bithyah holds a BA in health administration and has worked as a Spanish medical interpreter in Boston-area hospitals and clinics. In 2014, she received the “Women of Courage and Conviction” award from the National Council of Negro Women Greater Boston Section for her work with City Strings United. During her time in the A4A Capacity-Building Program, Bithyah will design systems for film, TV, and other directors to license her compositions for use in their work and elsewhere.
Mario Layne Fabrizio
Mario Layne Fabrizio (Cambridge) adamantly defies the labels of creative disciplines. Devoting his childhood to drawing, his adolescence to the drums, and then attending a jazz conservatory for college, he now uses whichever creative tools each project idea requires, from film to painting to music composition, to performance and poetry. He has performed at the Salzburg Jazz Festival (Austria), Jazz at Lincoln Center (NYC & Shanghai, China), Panama Jazz Festival, Birdland (NYC), The Whitney Museum (NYC), Kunming's International Drum Festival (China) and The Kennedy Center (DC). In 2020, he was selected to compose for National Sawdust for their New Works Commission, and his compositions have had critical acclaim most recently in the NY Times. Tropos, a project Mario co-leads, released a record in 2020 called Axioms // 75 AB which is placed on Biophilia Records. During his time in the A4A Capacity-Building Program, he wants to lay the strategic groundwork for a financing a stable future.
Hamed Noori
Multidisciplinary artist Hamed Noori (Cambridge) focuses on personal experiences within the frame of a collective identity that is deeply linked with social and historical issues. His video “Love,” for example, which features two continually rotating figures of a Barbie and a Ken doll melted together in an inescapable embrace, brings to mind a dark iteration of Louise Bourgeois’s “The Couple,” the entwinement of its figures both unending and self-destructive. Hamed’s work has been included in shows across the world, including Dubai, Berlin, Madrid, D.C., Boston, and Tehran. Hamed has been selected for the BCA (Boston Center for the Arts) studio residency program in 2021 and is currently working on a geometrical photography collage based on photographs of Iranian and American nature. During his time in the A4A Capacity-Building Program, Hamed hopes to connect with American artists and explore opportunities in the U.S.
Rixy
Visual artist Rixy (Everett) conceptualizes Feminine divinity in its various forms and characterizations. She uses a range of media, but primarily aerosol, acrylic and pencil, which she applies to street wall surfaces, carved wood, or taut fabric. The goal of her work is to reinterpret stories of agency, and they often play on a range of sensual femininity. She demonstrates how the body reacts to what’s around it, and what it means to be born, to grow, and heal in one’s surroundings. Rixy has recently worked with the NFL Artist Replay, StreetTheory Gallery, and is a studio resident at the Boston Center of the Arts. She received a Juror's Choice Award in CAA's 2020 Emerging Artist Exhibition, 2019 Ruth Butler Travel Fellowship, and is currently an Adjunct Foundations Professor at the Boston Architectural College. During the A4A Capacity-Building Program Rixy will focus on deepening her financial and legal knowledge of all she needs to advocate for herself and her community through her creative work.
Starling
Dominican filmmaker, musician, and multimedia artist Starling (Lawrence) began his love of art through painting at the age of six, before moving to the U.S. at ten. As a teenager, he began making music videos and short films. Today he’s a senior at Providence College, where he studies Sociology, Film/Video, and Business Entrepreneurship. Through his work, Starling challenges societal norms and uplifts the voices of historically marginalized groups. Writing, directing, and producing a series of short films like "Heritage" (2018), "Poor Justice" (2019), and "Into the Frame" (2020) motivated him to grow his career in the arts. “Into the Frame” won third place prize at the 2019 Providence College Student Film Festival. During the A4A Capacity-Building Program, Starling looks forward to expanding his network of BIPoC mentors and peers and to establishing strong business practices to lead his film career to future success.
Lia Xu
Musician, author, and educator Lia Xu (Quincy) is an expert Guqin player, a Chinese stringed instrument with over 3,000 years of history. In 2019 she published The Art of Guqin and the Book of Songs in her native Hong Kong, which she exhibited at the Hong Kong Book Fair. Having plaid the guqin for over 20 years, Lia has performed, spoken, or taught throughout Boston, including at the Boston Athenaeum, Boston Children’s Chorus, International Education Week at the University of Massachusetts Boston, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the City of Boston, among others. Her quqin art activities show admirable persistence, collaboration and global impact. Currently, Lia works as Guqin Arts Specialist at Boston’s Chinatown Neighborhood Center, where her bilingual, Guqin-focused, K-12 art and music curriculum recently won the National Peace Education Project Award. During her time in the A4A Capacity-Building Program, Lia plans to launch a Guqin music education YouTube Channel.
Yungsurfgod
The musician and clothing designer known variously as Yungsurfgod and Surfy (Cambridge) uses lyrics and storytelling to express his emotions and to connect with audiences from all over the world. Inspired by artists such as Eazy E, Biggie Smalls, and Lil Wayne, Yungsurfgod’s music is ever-changing and adapts on a day-to-day basis. His latest single “DIY,” and the rest of his discography is available to stream on Spotify. Yungsurfgod has been a Cambridge resident his whole life and is also a current student at Bunker Hill Community College, where he’s focusing on Communications and Liberal Arts. During his time in the A4A Capacity-Building Program, he will focus on expanding the brand recognition of his clothing line.
Our Massachusetts programming is made possible in partnership with the Mass Cultural Council, the Barr Foundation, the City of Boston, the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts’ ValleyCreates Initiative, Essex County Community Foundation’s Creative County Initiative, the Deborah Munroe Noonan Memorial Fund (Bank of America, N.A.,Trustee), the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, New England Foundation for the Arts, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts through the Massachusetts Growth Capital Corporation.