MOCA GA / 2017/18 Working Artist Project Winners

Announcing the 10^th year winners of the 2017/2018 MOCA GA Working Artist Project Fellowship: Bojana Ginn, Michi Meko and Kirstin Mitchell.

“Reviewing the incredible spectrum of contemporary art practice in Atlanta was an embarrassment of riches. It has been my honor and privilege to be exposed to your work.”

Joey Orr, Curator

This year Joey Orr returned to MOCA GA as the guest curator for the 2017/2018 cycle! During the early years of MOCA GA, Joey served in numerous capacities including Development Manager and Curator of three notable exhibitions.

Joey Orr joined the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas in 2017 as the Andrew W. Mellon Curator for Research, part of their Integrated Arts Research Initiative. His recent curatorial post was as the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, where his major project aligned three exhibitions around artistic inquiry (Chicago Works: Andrew Yang, MCA Screen: Camille Hennrot’s Grosse Fatigue, and Diana Thater: The Sympathetic Imagination). Specifically trained in hybrid and artistic research methods, he received his MA in Visual and Critical Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and completed a practice-based, interdisciplinary PhD as an Arts and Sciences Fellow in the Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts at Emory University. He recently co-edited “Participatory Research and Visual Methods,” a special issue of Visual Methodologies (Research Methods Lab, Switzerland) and was an associate editor in the inaugural years of the Journal for Artistic Research (Bern, Switzerland). He is currently co-editing “Inhabiting Cultures,” a special issue of the Journal of American Studies (Cambridge University Press). His chapter “Collecting Social Things” will be out in the volume Rhetoric, Social Value, and the Arts in 2017 (Palgrave Pivot), as will his recent interview with artist Suzanne Lacy (Art & the Public Sphere). He is also a founding member of the idea collective, John Q, whose projects explore collaborative notions of public scholarship. In Atlanta, he was the founder of the five-year art-in-community project, ShedSpace, and in the early years of MOCA GA, he worked on such projects as Andrew Ross: Origins and the Georgia 7.

Interdisciplinary artist and former MD and scientist Bojana Ginn graduated from Medical School in Belgrade, Serbia in 2001, and completed her MFA in Sculpture at Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) in 2013. Merging art, science and technology, Bojana creates multimedia installations, sculpture and photography.

One of her first student works resonated with the international SciArt community and was presented at the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium in Brussels, and also in Ghent, Boston, and Baltimore. While at SCAD, Bojana was nominated for the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant and for the Outstanding Achievement Award, International Sculpture Center. After completing her studies, as a resident artist of the prestigious Studio Residency at The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Bojana was awarded a 2014 Tanne Foundation Award that she shares with her husband and artistic partner, Brian Ginn.

Bojana was honored to be an artist in residence for the 2015 Global Summit on Ethics in Bio-Engineering. For her trans-disciplinary work, her unorthodox use of materials, and her incorporation of video and sound digital technology, Bojana was a finalist for the 2015 World Technology Award in Art. Her work and writings are shown and published in Atlanta, nationally, and in Europe. Most recently her video work was exhibited at the 2016 Venice Architectural Biennale. Bojana lives with her husband and son in Decatur, GA and serves as a fellow of The World Technology Network, NYC.

Michi Meko’s multidisciplinary work mobilizes historic, contemporary, and speculative narratives that are personal and cultural, physical and psychological. Drawing influence from rural southern culture and contemporary urban subcultures, Meko reveals and builds upon the layered symbolism of ordinary and rejected objects, imbuing them with spiritual powers.
Central to the work is the consideration of buoyancy and navigation as metaphors for movement through social spaces, geographies, and temporalities. The map is a guide for understanding the past and the present, a metaphor for perseverance and survival

Kirstin Mitchell is a multi-media artist living in Atlanta, Georgia. Mitchell creates experiential environments in various mediums including, painting, installation and performance. Her work has been shown throughout the East Coast and Internationally, in Austria and Italy. She has performed with the support of the Franklin Furnace Fund in Manhattan, New York. Mitchell’s work has been featured in publications including Art in America, Art Papers and Flash Art magazines.