ArtReach is proud to announce the 13 projects that were awarded funding through our 2024
Artist Creation Project granting program!

These grant funds are available thanks to
our partnership with the
Ace Kazkayasi: Acceptance
Ace will produce Acceptance, a 5-minute short film that will explore the emotional and psychological challenges faced by a man with Bipolar I as he navigates love, shame, and the impact of living with Bipolar 1 in society. The story follows a man who, after falling for a coworker, feels pressured to hide his diagnosis to appear "normal”.
Cave Pearls: Forgotten Icarus
Cave Pearls will explore disenfranchised grief by reimagining the story of Icarus through the construction of wings and a bronze breastplate. The costume will then be fully realized in a photographed self-portrait series.
Jasmine Yiweza: Un Petit Bout
Jasmine will write and direct Un Petit Bout, a 5-minute short film that invites viewers to sit in on a conversation between a daughter and her mother. Set during the final stretch of a long drive to the airport that will see the daughter leave for university, the film will make a private conversation public, intimately exploring relationship dynamics, cultural influence, and generational patterns.
Kinu Patel: Dos Energías
Kinu will produce Dos Energías: an autobiographical short film scraping together vlogging footage & field notes, as windows into the artist’s life, gathered on their second solo backpacking trip through Central America. The film aims to serve as a practical resource for transmasculine folks to more confidently travel abroad, in the tropics. It also offers personal reflections, from weathering unforeseen storms in solitude, to tensely navigating border control & diffusing awkward-at-best bathroom debacles, ultimately challenging the concept of “transitioning” on a physical, social & spiritual basis.
Maryam Mohamed: Labour Labour Labour
Maryam will create Labour Labour Labour, an artistic work taking the form of a dress and apron that can be both worn and also shown as a sculpture or performance piece. The project intends to make a commentary on gender roles in Indo-Guyanese culture, specifically with regard to women in the domestic sphere. The title repeats to reference domestic labour, paid labour, and childbirth.
Melly Davidson: CLOSE ONE!
Melly will create CLOSE ONE!, a queer poetic investigation of scars as a counter-archive, as a memory map, as the anti-icloud. Merging interviews, poetics, collaging, and photo-documentation, this multimodal zine explores queer storytelling and identity in relation to the body, time, and memory.
Priscilla Williams: Inner Landscapes: A Winter Exploration
Priscilla will craft Inner Landscapes: A Winter Exploration, a collection featuring three large, bold sterling silver jewelry pieces each inspired by the textures, forms, and feelings evoked during winter. Through this project, they will delve into how the cold season, with its lack of sun and dormant landscape, impacts both the external world and our inner lives.
Middle: Bring Me to My Knees
Middle will self-record and produce Bring Me to My Knees, an audio exposure-therapy exploration that observes the emotional landscape of emerging from isolation. The track is a direct confrontation of social anxiety and self-doubt, and will blend genres, drawing from the artist’s Caribbean roots and love of experimental soundscapes.
Shulamit Sappire: a year(ish) in grief
Shully will create a year(ish) in grief, a zine combining visual and written content reflecting on the artist’s journey following the loss of their father. The project will explore the messiness of grief, mourning in distance, and the complexities of a family death, serving as a creative outlet to process emotions and foster a sense of connection with others who have faced similar losses.
Steffi Ng: Letters Home 回家
Steffi will create Letters Home 回家, a series of digital self-portraits capturing the artist moving through an installation of photos printed on large organza panels of family and landscapes from the artist’s life in Hong Kong. The project will explore newcomers’ evolving recollections of homeland and kinships with long-distance family and friends.
Tiara Chutkhan: A New Home for Sumintra: A Story of Caribbean Indenture
Tiara will write A New Home for Sumintra, a 20-page children’s book that introduces the concept of Caribbean indenture to young readers. The illustrated book follows Sumintra, a young girl whose family decides to leave their life behind in rural India for what they hope will be a better life in the Caribbean.
X Ali Khan: Patience I
X Ali Khan will create Patience I, a piece about learning that what is meant to happen will happen, and always in its own time. That we cannot sidestep our way to healing. A piece that teaches the artist about acceptance and love in the face of disability and housing/welfare violence. Patience I is comprised of 3 pieces of furniture that have traveled with the artist through 9 moves across 3 provinces in 4 years. The furniture will be reclaimed via paint and collage and recreated into a 3D mixed media art installation.
Yahn Nemirovsky: Forms of Devotional Ephemera from Outer Space
Yahn will develop Forms of Devotional Ephemera from Outer Space, a 2-minute stop motion animation film featuring handmade 2D paper and textile figures. Capturing a spirit of devotion to that which is temporal and transient, these abstract forms, accompanied by fragmented stitched text, will be pictured in movement and change—billowing, expanding, shriveling, interacting, and disappearing.
We were also able to invest in the artistic development the following artists:
Abdu Aljahma - a photographer, filmmaker, and zine-creator
Angel Time - a photographer and multidisciplinary artist
Fatima Mohamed - a VFX artist, visual artist, and YouTube content creator
Karen Cheung - a zinemaker, visual artist, and multidisciplinary creator
Shyla Gray - a singer and songwriter
💸✨ Want to learn more about this grant? Head to artreach.org/projectgrant! ✨💸