Awardees receive $10,000 in unrestricted funds, as well as access to the ongoing benefits of the Artadia Awards program. Applications were open to any visual artist living within New York City’s five boroughs for over two years, working in any medium and at any stage of their career.

In the first round of jurying, Susan Cross, Senior Curator of Visual Art, MASS MoCA; Legacy Russell, Associate Curator of Exhibitions, The Studio Museum in Harlem; and Akili Tommasino, Associate Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art, Museum of Fine Arts Boston selected five finalists: American Artist, Alexandra Bell, Tommy Kha, Joiri Minaya, and Tammy Nguyen. For the second round of evaluations, Kelly Taxter, Barnett and Annalee Newman Curator of Contemporary Art The Jewish Museum, joined Legacy Russell to conduct virtual studio visits with each of the five Finalists and determine the Awardees.

On receiving the 2020 New York Artadia Award, Alexandra states, “I’m excited to join Artadia’s network of notable Awardee artists and am grateful for the recognition. The Award is an incredible vote of confidence in my work; the support will allow me to continue to develop my practice.” Of the Awards process, Joiri says, “I really admire the work of the other four Artadia Finalists, so it was truly an honor to have shared that platform with them. Having been selected as an Awardee is thrilling, not only for the recognition and support, but for the impact it will have in my practice.”

Of Bell’s work, Legacy notes, “Alexandra Bell’s work explores news and reportage as an exercise of faction, fiction, and faith-building, a simultaneously generative and destructive tool that provides us with language to pinpoint things whilst simultaneously inculcating individual bias and the complexity of our worldviews.” Speaking to Minaya’s practice, Kelly states, “Minaya’s work around the notion of “tropical identity” elicits a palpable tension between critique and seduction. Her wildly decorated, alluring environments and images carry a biting commentary on the ways in which privilege injures ecology and the body, while at the same time, it slyly purges those impositions.”