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Selected from nearly 3,000 applicants after a rigorous application and peer review process, Sarah Lawrence theatre faculty members Itziar Barrio and Modesto Flako Jimenez are among the 188 American and Canadian artists, scholars, and scientists selected to receive a prestigious 2024 Guggenheim Fellowship. Barrio has been named a Fellow in the Film-Video category, and Jimenez has been named a Fellow in the Drama & Performance Art category.
A member of the Sarah Lawrence theatre faculty since 2022, Itziar Barrio is an interdisciplinary artist and educator based in New York City. Her work has been presented internationally at 14th Shanghai Biennale, ONX Onassis Foundation (NYC), PARTICIPANT INC (NYC), MACRO Museum (Rome), Matadero Madrid, MACBA Museum (Barcelona), Belgrade's Contemporary Art Museum, Museo del Banco de la República (Bogotá), Abrons Arts Center (NYC), Academy of Fine Arts in Gdansk (Poland), tranzit (Romania), and the Havana Biennial, among many others. Her survey exhibition was curated by Johanna Burton (Director of L.A. MOCA) and her recent monograph catalog has been published by SKIRA, with a book launch at PARTICIPANT INC on April 28, 2024. Barrio is a New Museum’s NEW INC incubator member (2020-2024), and a 2018-2019 recipient of the Spanish Academy in Rome Fellowship. She has received awards and grants from institutions that include NYSCA, the Brooklyn Art Council, Ministry of Culture of Spain, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, and BBVA Foundation. Barrio’s work has been written about in ARTFORUM, Art in America, The New York Times, The Brooklyn Rail, ART PAPERS, and BOMB, and she has lectured internationally.
Modesto “Flako” Jimenez is a Dominican-born, Bushwick-raised, multi-hyphenate artist whose work exists in and explores the intersections of identity, language, mediums, cultures, and communities found in his personal life and beyond. Jimenez’s recent work includes Taxilandia, a site-specific performance in a moving taxi that received a Critic’s Pick from Time Out New York and The New York Times and was recently recognized with an Obie Special Citation Award. Jimenez is the founder of ¡Oye! Group, a nonprofit that serves as an incubator for artists both native and immigrant to New York City. In 2023 Jimenez was addressing gun violence as a Public Artist in Residence at NYC Health + Hospitals as part of the NYC Dept. of Cultural Affairs’ PAIR program. Jimenez has been selected as a Princeton Hodder Fellow for 2023-2024, and in 2021 received a Jerome Foundation Fellowship and a Foundation for Contemporary Arts award in performing arts and theater. Currently, Jimenez is working on Mercedes, a multi-disciplinary art experience exploring the relationships between matriarchy and ancestors, familial bonds and inherited trauma, and how our own identity can impact our mental health.
Created and initially funded in 1925 by Senator Simon and Olga Guggenheim in memory of their son, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has sought since its inception to “further the development of scholars and artists by assisting them to engage in research in any field of knowledge and creation in any of the arts, under the freest possible conditions.” Since its establishment, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has granted nearly $400 million in Fellowships to over 19,000 individuals, among whom are more than 125 Nobel laureates, members of all the national academies, winners of the Pulitzer Prize, Fields Medal, Turing Award, Bancroft Prize, National Book Award, and other internationally recognized honors.