Social Engagement Artist Residency

MoCNA’s Social Engagement Art Residency (SEAR) of 2024 is funded by the Mellon Foundation. This partnership offers us the flexibility to mold a program based on Native artist social engagement and impact that meet the objectives of the Mellon Foundation while supporting MoCNA’s goals in terms of activating contemporary Native artist leadership, capacity, and community building.

MoCNA’s SEAR hosts two Indigenous artists twice a year for a ten-day residency at MoCNA located in downtown Santa Fe, New Mexico. Artists will have the chance to work together or brainstorm their own separate projects, working with their chosen local community or within the Santa Fe regional area. Examples of communities to work with would include advocacy groups and/or Indigenous communities addressing current social and political issues. Art works could cover various media and a wide range of project methods that engage the community or a specific facet of the community, strategically producing both artful and social outcomes. Artists are invited to give a talk about their work at the end of their residency at MoCNA as a public program and the IAIA (Institute of American Indian Arts) community.

While the outcomes of social practice art could result in video installations, sound installations, photography, prints, or murals, which function perfectly within a museum or gallery context, sometimes the results are also realized in the relationships themselves, in shifts of community power, community-driven strategies, and social infrastructures that resolve pre-existing conflicts, traumas, or social injustices. This opportunity provides Indigenous artists with a meaningful period of artmaking and interaction with IAIA students, MoCNA staff and faculty, and the Santa Fe arts community.

MoCNA looks to enable contemporary Native artists to negotiate and position community-driven Indigenous narratives within the public sphere. SEAR is a program that serves as a conduit to generate community dialogue and amplify Indigenous voices. MoCNA’s goal is to realize projects with artists that recognize and support contemporary Indigenous discourse and celebrate and engage the vibrant community that both MoCNA and the Santa Fe community have to offer.

Deadline

Applications are open to either spring or summer residencies and will remain open until filled by the following deadlines at midnight Mountain Standard Time. Important Note: The application deadline has passed for the 2024 residency. 

SEAR Includes the Following

• $3,000 stipend
• $300 supply stipend
• Travel costs
• Hotel room accommodations
• Local transportation in Santa Fe
• Per diem for the 10-day residency
• Access to MoCNA Education classroom for studio needs

What is Socially Engaged Art?

Social practice art is an interdisciplinary means that utilizes social space and relationships and works with communities as ways to recover knowledge and redefine notions of power. It offers agency on a broad spectrum of social, cultural, psychological, political, and economic issues. Social practice art is particularly relevant to Indigenous art practices because it relies upon relationships, respect, protocols, and reciprocity. These processes create insights into community self-determination and community-driven processes that define sovereignty.

SEAR History

In 2014, the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA) created a 10-day Social Engagement Art Residency program. MoCNA’s Social Engagement Art Residency was funded by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) through the Artist Leadership Program for Museums and Cultural Institutions up until 2017. This partnership offered us the flexibility to mold a program based on Native artist social engagement and impact that met the objectives of the Smithsonian while supporting MoCNA’s goals in terms of activating contemporary Native artist leadership, capacity, community building, and the Native American Fine Art Movement. From 2017 to 2019, the SEAR program continued with a grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Whereas the museum serves as a catalyst for artists to generate community dialogue and dynamic experiences, the MoCNA Social Engagement Residency realizes socially engaged art projects that celebrate and engage the vibrant community that IAIA, MoCNA, and Santa Fe offer. The museum looks to enable contemporary Native artists to negotiate and position community-driven Indigenous narratives within the public sphere.