PORTLAND — Indigo Arts Alliance (IAA) is an arts incubator founded in 2018 and launched in 2019 located in Portland, Maine. IAA’s mission is to cultivate the artistic development of people of African descent in connection with other artists from diverse backgrounds of the African Diaspora. An integral aspect of IAA’s work is to provide Maine based artists of African descent access to a broader range of practicing Black and Brown artists from around the globe.

To date, Indigo Arts Alliance has served 27 artists in residence. Artists came from the following cultural heritages including some of the following countries: African American/US, Belize, Peru, Brazil, Sierra Leone, Trinidad, Jamaica, Mexico, India, Ethiopia, Sudan, Barbados, Gabon, and Ghana. 

The first two years of the Indigo Arts Alliance residency program was invitational. For the 2022 cohort year, the artists were nominated by a large pool of artists, former artists in residence, curators, collectors, critics, and community partners. Applicants were then juried by selected members of the IAA community. This year's cohort represents our commitment to supporting the Artistic practices of Black women from across the African Diaspora, celebrating their voices and vision as integral to the Global Art Canon. 

Addressing the underrepresentation of Black and Brown artists world-wide, the IAA residency provides space for dialogue and exchange between artists of African descent and other communities of color. The core imperative of the Indigo Arts Alliance residency program is to establish a robust and dynamic experience through creative production and intellectual engagement. 

During the 2022 Mentor/Mentee Program, each of our visiting mentor artists will be paired with a New England-based artist who will be announced later in the year.

Tanya Crane, featured from April 4 to April 29, is a Southern California native and a Professor of the Practice in Metals at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts. She was the 2018 Society of North American Goldsmiths Emerging Artist selected to present at SOFA Chicago, the winner of the 2017 Society of Arts and Crafts Artist Award, and the first recipient of the Doris Prouty Foundation Grant for BIPOC/AAPI women in 2021. Crane featured her body of work Polarity, Exposing the Tensity, at the National Ornamental Metal Museum in Memphis, Tennessee in her first solo exhibition in 2017. Crane's work is in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Stewart Program for Modern Design in Montreal, Canada and the National Ornamental Metal Museum in Memphis, Tennessee. Crane’s work embodies the many layers of human existence. These include history, race, class and culture. Coming from the perspective of an African American woman, she uses community and inclusiveness as a magnetic beacon to diversify and expand ideas, understandings and codifications.  To learn more about her work, visit https://www.tanyamoniquejewelry.com/.

Alexandra Bell, featured from May 4 through May 31, is a multidisciplinary artist who investigates the complexities of narrative, information consumption, and perception. Utilizing various media, she deconstructs language and imagery to explore the tension between marginal experiences and dominant histories. Through investigative research, she considers the ways media frameworks construct memory and inform discursive practices around race, politics, and culture. Her work has been exhibited at Jeffrey Deitch Gallery, Charlie James Gallery, MoMA PS1, We Buy Gold, and The Whitney Museum of American Art. She is a 2020 Sarah Arison Artadia awardee and a 2021 Pioneer Works resident. Bell holds a B.A. in interdisciplinary studies in the humanities from the University of Chicago and an M.S. in journalism from Columbia University. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. To learn more about her work, visit http://www.alexandrabell.com/.

Adama Delphine Fawundu, featured between June 6 and June 30, is a photographer and visual artist born in Brooklyn of Mende and Bubi descent. Fawundu co-published the critically acclaimed book, MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora. For decades, she has exhibited both nationally and internationally and is a 2022 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition finalist. Her awards include, The Anonymous Was A Women Grant, New York Foundation for The Arts Photography Fellowship (2016) and the Rema Hort Mann Artist Grant (2018) amongst others. She was commissioned by the Park Avenue Armory to participate in the 100 Years|100 Women Project for The Women’s Suffrage NYC Centennial Consortium (2019-2021). Her works are in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art in Brooklyn, NY, Princeton University Museum in Princeton, NJ, Bryn Mawr College in Bryn Mawr, PA, The Petrucci Family Foundation of African American Art in Asbury, NJ, The Brooklyn Historical Society in Brooklyn, NY, Norton Museum of Art in Palm Springs, FL, The David C. Driskell Art Collection in College Park, MD, and a number of private collections. She is an Assistant Professor of Visual Arts at Columbia University. To learn more about her work, visit https://delphinefawundu.com/.

Shay Youngblood, featured from July 10 through August 7, is a writer, educator and interdisciplinary artist. An author of novels, a collection of short stories, and numerous essays, her published plays have been widely produced. Her short stories have been performed at Symphony Space and recorded for NPR’s Selected Shorts. Youngblood received an MFA in Playwriting from Brown University. Her current projects include children’s books, an ongoing multi-media performance work on architecture, memory, and the environment inspired by travels in Japan, China, and the U.S. and a commissioned play inspired by interviews with over 100 Southern Black women. She is a board member of Yaddo Artist Colony and a commissioner on the board of the Japan U.S. Friendship Commission. To learn more about her work, visit http://www.shayyoungblood.com/index.

Renata Felinto will be featured from September 7 through October 28 and has been working for 20 years in the visual arts as an artist, researcher and educator, ten of which were dedicated to art-education in museums and art and culture institutions, having been the coordinator of the Núcleo de Educação do Museu Afro Brasil from 2007 to 2010. The art produced by women and men of African descent has been Felinto’s main research topic, as well as researching forms of registration, recognition and propagation of non-hegemonic productions made in the visual arts. Her production focuses on the issue of female black identity, displacement and connections such as globalization in dialogue with ancient history. To learn more about her work, visit https://renatafelinto.wordpress.com/.

For more information please contact jordia@indigoartsalliance.me; and visit indigoartsalliance.me to remain updated on all upcoming public engagement programs with the artists in residence program.