We are thrilled to announce our ten Boston-based artists selected to join this year’s Capacity-Building Program for our fifth year of partnership with the City of Boston and the Mayor’s Office of Arts & Culture!

Victoria Lynn Awkward / VLA DANCE

Dancer and Founder/Director of the company VLA DANCE, Victoria Lynn Awkward (Dorchester) aims to choreograph opportunities for people of all identities while intentionally highlighting and celebrating BIPOC folx. Throughout her process as company leader and member, she remains alert to the many identities of her dancers and how those identities play into VLA’s collective creative practice. She also teaches contemporary dance through in-person classes at VLA DANCE and Cambridge-based Midday Movement Series. Her love for teaching expands to her work with youth as the Head Dance Coach at Middlesex School in Concord. This year, Victoria was chosen for a Boston Dancemaker’s Residency, and during her time in the A4A Capacity-Building Program, she will fortify the administrative infrastructure of her company as they transition from part time to full time operations.

Arielle Gray

Arielle Gray (Mattapan) is a writer and multimedia artist. She is the current Arts Engagement Producer for The ARTery, WBUR's Arts and Culture team. Her freelance writing has appeared in VICE, Bustle, Huffington Post, Afropunk and The Black Youth Project. Most of her work focuses on the intersection of being queer and Afro-Caribbean, while living with a mental illness. Her forthcoming exhibit "Dreams and Tings" with VSA Massachusetts explores these intersections in nuanced depth. She is the co-founder of the literary organization Print Ain’t Dead and is on the board of What's On Your Mind Inc., a mental health organization centering the experiences of POC. She is currently writing her first novel, "It All Falls Down."

Nadroj Nina Holmes

Installation and performance artist, Nadroj Nina Holmes (Boston) roots their work in decolonization theory and the living history of Black liberation efforts. Their practice centers Blackness, both organically through lived experience and intentionally with an academic lens, while showcasing and deconstructing the social politics inherent in pop culture practices. This may take the form of strategic social interventions in ritual spaces historically inhospitable to the Black body or the creation and exaltation of images that are rooted in Black resistance culture. Nadroj has been awarded the Boston Opportunity Grant and a fellowship for the CreateWell Fund, where they are now a co-tending designer and a co-designer of the Converging Liberations Residency at the Studios at MASS MoCA.

Stephanie Houten

Multidisciplinary artist Stephanie Houten (Boston) explores artistic storytelling in social justice movements and community-led spaces. Her practice includes filmmaking, photography, video installation, and musical performance. Recognizing that there is no such thing as objective media, she strives to make filmmaking and photography accessible to all through collaborative filmmaking and through teaching DIY filmmaking fundamentals to people with all levels of experience. She graduated from Bunker Hill Community College in 2014 and from Massachusetts College of Art & Design in 2018, and was an exhibiting artist at Boston's Illuminus Festival in 2018. During the A4A Capacity-Building Program, she will focus on designing a business plan that centers her filmmaking in the sphere of social justice.

Mariona Lloreta

Mariona Lloreta (East Boston) is a Catalan-American interdisciplinary artist working in film, painting, and dance. Her work celebrates the universal thread that binds our human experience as it examines the fine line between presence and absence, wholesomeness and brokenness, past, present and future. Her work dives into themes of identity, spirituality and collective memory, while reflecting upon the beauty and vulnerability of human existence. Mariona’s films have been shown at international festivals across the US, Canada, and Spain, and she has edited, directed, or produced films for clients in South Africa, Nigeria, and the U.S. Her recent short film, "A lua nunca morre" (filmed in Rio de Janeiro) has already won numerous awards, including Best Experimental Film Award and Best Cinematography. While in the A4A Capacity-Building Program, Mariona’s goal is to design a savings plan and branding to ensure her creative success in the coming years.

Nijah Nine

Visual artist Naijah Nine (Jamaica Plain) specializes in portraiture and character design. Subjects of their work range from social justice issues to introspective identity work. Naijah was featured at Raw Artist’s Boston Bold 2015 showcase. Collaborations include works with Origin Nile film studio and House of Blues Boston. Their work has also been published in the first edition of the independent zine, Feminist Frequency. Currently Naijah is working on a series that deals with a variety of subjects ranging from classism to mental health to identity.

Lolita Parker Jr.

Born in Los Angeles, California, Lolita Parker Jr. (West End), photographer, archivist, oral historian, curator, greenspace activist and co-caretaker of both the Bessie Barnes and United Neighbors of Lower Roxbury Community Gardens' now calls Boston's West End home. With 55+ years behind the lens, shovel and mic they insist their best work is in front of them.

Mel Taing

Mel Taing (East Boston) is a Cambodian-American photographer and experimental filmmaker whose aesthetic is rooted in creating colorful environments that are filmic, dreamy and slightly surreal. As a child of Cambodian refugees in America, Mel is deeply interested in visually exploring concepts of intergenerational trauma, racial identity, spirituality, and resilience in community. Mel’s notable collaborations include a project called BLACK, BROWN, OTHER, a photo essay on the alienation of queer artists of color within their communities and featured in Nylon Magazine, and PREJUDICE IS A DISEASE, a photo series embodying concepts of Yellow Peril in the time of COVID-19 featured in The Boston Globe and Artscope Magazine. Mel has exhibited her photography in Brooklyn, NY, Boston, MA and Lowell, MA. During the A4A Capacity Building Program, Mel hopes to build a strong foundation for her second year as a full-time freelancer.

Jessi Xiong

Jessi Xiong (Boston) is a queer Hmong animator and multidisciplinary artist with a passion for storytelling. Jessi has always loved film, but in animation specifically they particularly enjoy the endless possibilities of creating new worlds, fantastical creatures, and alternate realities that could never be replicated through live action. Jessi finds that their different forms of creative expression inform and inspire each other to build layers. For example: rotoscoping and animating over their own choreography, or creating a film out of one of their poems. The common thread through it all is the expression of emotion and the way art can connect different people. During their time in the A4A Capacity-Building program, Jessi plans to explore apprenticeships in tattooing.

Szu-Chieh Yun

Visual artist Szu-Chieh Yun (Boston) employs diverse methods of making by applying drawing, painting, digital photography, and sculpture. Her current practice explores themes of migration, immigration and transformation with a focus on the Chinese diaspora. Drawn from her personal experience as a first-generation Taiwanese-American, she creates works in response to spaces to which she has traveled, her surroundings, and in reflection of her own identity. Her work aims to examine the effects of globalization in cultural blending, and the slipping away of cultural identity. She is especially interested in dislocation between objects, people, and spaces. During the A4A Capacity-Building program, Szu will rebuild her website in anticipation of applying for future opportunities.

In addition to our partnership with the City of Boston, our broader 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.