Winners of the 2023-2024 Working Artist Project are: Namwon Choi, Jose Ibarra Rizo and Jane Foley
Namwon Choi
Georgia based artist Namwon Choi acquired her BFA and MFA in Traditional Korean Painting from Hongik University in Seoul, Korea in 2002, and her MFA in Drawing and Painting at Georgia State University in Atlanta in 2014. In 2022 she had a solo exhibition at the Moss Art Center at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, VA and at Laney Contemporary Gallery in Savannah, GA. In fall 2021 her solo exhibition at THE END Project Space in Atlanta, GA was reviewed in the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Choi’s work has been exhibited at the New York City Korean Culture Center, the Los Angeles Korean Culture Center, Aqua Art Miami, at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Georgia in Atlanta and, B20 Wiregrass Biennial at the Wiregrass Museum in Dothan, Alabama. Her work in the “New Connections” exhibition at the Korean Cultural Center in Washington D.C. was reviewed in the Washington Post. In 2022, She was one of five artists included in New Worlds: Georgia Women to Watch, co-curated by Melissa Messina and Sierra King, at the Atlanta Contemporary, in Atlanta GA, organized by the Georgia Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts.
Jose Ibarra Rizo
José Ibarra Rizo (b. 1992) is a Mexican-American multidisciplinary artist living and working in Atlanta, GA. His work primarily focuses on identity and is currently exploring the migrant experience in the American South. José is the recipient of the inaugural MINT + ACP Emerging Artist Fellowship, one of five selected artists for MINT's 2022-23 Leap Year artist program, and one of three awardees for the 2022 Atlanta Artadia Awards. His work lives in the permanent collection of the High Museum of Art and clients include Rolling Stone and TIME Magazine.
Jane Foley
Jane Foley (b. 1985, New Orleans) is a sculpture, sound, and new media artist living in Atlanta, Georgia (US). Foley has created sound sculptures for the Architecture Triennale in Lisbon, Portugal and La Friche Belle de Mai in Marseille, France with Zurich-based Sound Development City, as well as composed sounds that played in taxicabs throughout the 5th Marrakech Biennale in Morocco. In Atlanta, they have created public artworks for the High Museum, Dashboard, The Beltline, Flux Projects, and the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta Airport, among others. Foley currently teaches sculpture and new media at Emory University, after completing an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Dr. Vivian Li, Guest Curator
Dr. Vivian Li is The Lupe Murchison Curator of Contemporary Art. Since she began at the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) in 2019, Li has realized ambitious collaborations with artists such as Mel Chin and Guadalupe Rosales and organized Slip Zone: A New Look at Postwar Abstraction in the Americas and East Asia (co-curated) and the retrospective Matthew Wong: The Realm of Appearances. Prior to coming to the DMA, she worked at the Guggenheim Museum; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Worcester Art Museum and was a lecturer at Clark University. A specialist in postwar and contemporary art in Asia, Li received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She has edited and contributed to various publications, including the Oxford Art Journal, Art History, Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, and the anthology Postwar—A Global Art History, 1945–1965.
These three 2023-2024 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 48 Fellows over the past 16 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.