Winners of the 2022-2023 Working Artist Project are: Caleb Jamel Brown, Jessica Caldas, and Ato Ribeiro
Caleb Jamel Brown
Caleb Jamel Brown (b. 1993, Atlanta, Georgia) lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia. Brown is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily in collage, photography, painting, video, and installation. Brown’s work often uses up-cycled fabrics and paper, layered with photographs, paint, plexiglass, clothes pens, and various other materials to examine themes of black labor & leisure in the south, craft traditions, our relationship to clothes mental health, and overlapping psychological states. Utilization of abstraction and vernacular as the foundation for larger cultural narratives is at the core of his practice.
Brown received his BFA from Valdosta State University in Valdosta, GA in 2016. Brown has had solo and two-person exhibitions at Chapter, New York; Camayuhs, Atlanta; MINT, Atlanta; Plough Gallery, Tifton, GA; and the Mast, Atlanta; among others. His work has been included in group exhibitions at Alabama Contemporary, Mobile, AL; Below Grand, New York; The Fairest, Berlin; Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Greenville, SC; and MINT, Atlanta; among others.
Jessica Caldas
Jessica Caldas is a Puerto Rican American, Georgia and Florida based, artist, advocate, and activist. Her work connects personal and community narratives to larger themes and social issues. Caldas has participated in numerous emerging artist residencies, including the Atlanta Printmakers Studio in 2011, MINT Gallery's Leap Year Program from 2012-2013, The Creatives Project form 2018-2019, Vermont Studio Center in 2020, and Art on the Atlanta Beltline in 2020-2021. Her work has been shown at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, GA, the Art and History Museums in Maitland, Florida and is included in the collections of Kilpatrick Townsend, The City of Atlanta Office of Cultural Affairs, and the Kyoto International Community House.
In her advocacy work, Caldas has spent time lobbying for policy at the local level in Georgia and spent time with the YWCA Georgia Women's Policy Institute at the 2016 general assembly to assure the passage of the Rape Kit Bill and in 2016 to stop HB 51 in 2017, a bill that would have harmed the safety of sexual assault survivors on college campuses.
Caldas received her Masters of Fine Arts degree at Georgia State University in 2019 and received her BFA in printmaking from the University of Georgia in 2012. She currently runs Good News Arts, a small community arts space and gallery in rural North Central Florida.
Ato Ribeiro
Ato Ribeiro (b. 1989) is a multidisciplinary artist working in a variety of media including sculptural installation, drawing and printmaking. He was the 2017 Mercedes-Benz Financial Services Emerging Artist Award recipient, Artist in Resident at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, Germany, and received fellowships at Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT, The Studios at MASS MoCA in North Adams, MA and the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in Madison, ME. His work has been exhibited at Lisa Sette Gallery (Phoenix, AZ), Nubuke Foundation (Accra, Ghana), Cranbrook Art Museum (Bloomfield Hills, MI), the N’Namdi Center for Contemporary Art (Detroit, MI), the Rozsa Center (Houghton, MI), and Anastasia Tinari Projects (Chicago, IL) among others.
Drew Sawyer, Guest Curator
Drew Sawyer is the Phillip Leonian and Edith Rosenbaum Leonian Curator of Photography at the Brooklyn Museum where he has curated and co-curated several shows, including John Edmonds: A Sidelong Glance, Liz Johnson Artur: Dusha, and Garry Winogrand: Color. He has previously held curatorial positions at the Museum of Modern Art and the Columbus Museum of Art, where he co-organized the historical survey, Art after Stonewall, 1969-1989. Other exhibitions include Isaac Julien: Looking for Langston, Allan Sekula: Aerospace Folktales and Other Stories, and Lucy Raven: Low Relief. Sawyer holds a Ph.D. in Art History from Columbia University, and is a regular contributor to publications, including Artforum, Aperture, Mousse, and Osmos.
These three 2022-2023 winners bring a total of forty-five artists supported by the Working Artist Project.
About the Working Artist Project
MOCA GA’s Working Artist Project (WAP) was developed in support of established artists in the Metropolitan Atlanta area. Each year the program is funded by the Charles Loridans Foundation, the Antinori Foundation, the AEC Trust, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Including the three Fellows announced today, there are a total of 45 Fellows over the past 15 years. As a museum that is dedicated first and foremost to supporting Georgia’s contemporary artists, it is MOCA GA’s goal to encourage these artists to remain in our city to establish Atlanta as one of the best cities for launching a viable career in the arts.
“This legacy initiative provides an unparalleled level of support for individual artists, expands the Museum’s mission, and promotes Atlanta as a city where artists can live, work, and thrive. MOCA GA supports artists by granting a major stipend to create new work; by presenting a solo exhibition of the new work; by producing an accompanying exhibition catalog; and by providing paid studio apprentices over the course of one year,” —Annette Cone-Skelton, Director of MOCA GA
The Working Artist Project is supported by the Charles Loridans Foundation, the Antinori Foundation, the AEC Trust, and the National Endowment for the Arts.