Artadia is pleased to announce the 2022 Chicago Artadia Awardees:

Artadia is honored to partner with three foundations who have committed to supporting exceptional artists in Chicago with these $10,000 awards in their respective name. Selva Aparicio is the recipient of The Pritzker Pucker Family Foundation Artadia Award; Azadeh Gholizadeh is the recipient of The LeRoy Neiman and Janet Byrne Neiman Foundation Artadia Award; and Maryam Taghavi is the recipient of The Joyce Foundation Artadia Award.

In addition to the financial awards, all Awardees will have access to the ongoing benefits of the Artadia Awards program. The 2022 Chicago Artadia Award application was open to visual artists working in any visual media, at any stage in their career, who have been living and working within Chicago Cook County for a minimum of two years.

The decision was reached after an extensive two-tiered jury process, culminating in virtual studio visits with Jurors Solana Chehtman, Director of Creative Practice and Social Impact, The Shed and Robyn Ferrell, Associate Curator, The Art Institute of Chicago.

“It was an honor to participate as a Juror in the Artadia Awards, and learn more about the exciting current landscape of contemporary artists in Chicago,” Solana Chehtman commented. “We had a wonderfully diverse group of artists, practices, and perspectives, which speaks not only to the outstanding local talent but also to their trust in Artadia as an important source of support.”

Chicago-based curator Robyn Farrell shared in a similar vein, “The depth and range of this year’s Artadia cycle is a testament to the brilliance and dynamism of Chicago’s arts community. It was an honor to participate in Artadia’s essential program of support that encourages artists to further engage and enrich their practice and our city’s cultural landscape.”

All three Awardees embodied the spirit of Artadia’s mission to support some of the most innovative artists working today. Of Aparicio’s work, Chehtman remarked that her “endless curiosity, conceptual and technical rigor, and the particular fascination she finds in liminal spaces around death and decay, set her work apart: it is not only beautiful and poetic, it is also powerful and transformative – both at the individual and the collective levels. She’s at a pivotal point in her career, and not afraid to try new things, which makes her the perfect candidate for this kind of support.” Farrell likewise noted, “[Selva’s] distinct form of making is both corporeal and conceptual, executed through a range of unexpected media that includes lettuce, cicada wings, dandelions, and public gatherings. It is through these highly disparate sources that Aparicio imbues meaning through the ephemeral which manifests deeply sensitive issues of death, mourning, and intimacy.”

“Maryam Taghavi situates language across material forms as a means to explore alternate belief systems and multidisciplinary models of meaning-making. Her experimentation and exploitation of traditional letter characters–through photography, painting, video, performance, and installation–opens up new interpretations and opportunities for experience. These transpositions push typical modes of exhibition and linguistic strategies that expose the intertwined and complicated relationship between language, politics, and cultural history,” Robyn Farrell commented, on Taghavi. Chehtman echoed, “We were excited to select Maryam for the Artadia Awards, as a way to support the next stage of her already strong practice”

“In her particular use of abstraction and color throughout mediums, Azadeh Gholizadeh’s work conveys a unique sense of togetherness in loneliness. While she considers her process a way to find balance in chaos, her work also dares to break the traditions of the landscape shape and the frame itself, inviting viewers to reconsider their perspective,” Chehtman shared, “This award couldn’t come at a more important point in her career, where she’s opening up to new technologies, and continuing to evolve her strong research.” Farrell also added about Gholizadeh: “[her] work finds freedom through rigidity in a methodic, yet meditative process that layers memory, loss, and place. Her abstracted tapestries redefine the traditions of her chosen medium as she utilizes formal elements of color, composition, and scale to explore nostalgia and belonging through a host of sensorial considerations and personal experience.”

In addition to Aparicio, Gholizadeh, and Taghavi, this year’s Finalists for the Chicago Award included Ashley January, Jeffly Gabriela Molina, and Judith Mullen, selected by Christina de Léon, Associate Curator, Cooper Hewitt, Negarra A. Kudumu, Independent Curator and Founder/Director, Art + Healing, and Robyn Farrell, Associate Curator, Art Institute of Chicago.

Click here to read the full press release.