Creative Capital awards $2.45 million to 55 artists in Visual Arts, Technology, Performing Arts, Film/Moving Image, and Literature.

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Marking 25 years of groundbreaking artist support, Creative Capital has recognized and awarded grants and services to more than 1,000 visionary artists creating new work.

January 21, 2025 (New York, NY)—Creative Capital, the nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting individual artists, announced that it will award $2.45 million in unrestricted project grants to 55 artists to create 49 new works in Visual Arts, Technology, Performing Arts, Film/Moving Image, and Literature, as well as multidisciplinary and socially engaged forms in all disciplines. Celebrating 25 years, Creative Capital has provided $55 million in grants and services to 1,010 outstanding artists across the United States.

“Creative Capital is proud to support experimental, pathbreaking artists seeking to realize new works at a grassroots level, from rural communities to metropolitan cities. We continue to see trailblazing ideas burgeoning in all disciplines, and this is exactly the time in America when we need these voices to be heard and new works to come to life.” —Christine Kuan, President & Executive Director, Creative Capital

The awarded 2025 Creative Capital projects were selected from a pool of 5,653 applications from all 50 states and regions in the United States via a democratic, national open call. Project proposals were evaluated through an external review process that included 120 industry leaders, programmers, cultural producers, and artists, and culminated in discipline-specific final panels. The Creative Capital Awards catalyze projects that propose radical new ideas and groundbreaking formal and conceptual approaches.

“This is a profound moment to invest in the powerful imaginations of artists. From a landscape opera that tells ancestral stories of environment in the Jurassic canyons of southern Colorado, to an experimental documentary exploring migration and forensics on the South Texas border, to a project that transforms a Louisiana plantation into a site of reckoning, these 55 visionary artist proposals are boldly pushing form and ideas forward.” —Angela Mattox, Director of Artist Initiatives, Creative Capital

The 2025 Creative Capital Awardee cohort comprises 75% artists of color, 56% women, 18% gender-nonconforming, nonbinary, and trans artists, and 11% artists with disabilities. The artists range in age from 29 to 72 and reflect all career stages, from emerging to established. In total, 29 cities and 18 American states are represented in this cohort.

The 49 innovative new projects, including painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, video, installation, dance, theater, jazz, opera, multimedia performance, narrative film, experimental film, documentary film, poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, will explore urgent topics of our time, such as climate emergency, gentrification, queer ecologies, anti-colonialism, mental health, artificial intelligence, immigration, reparations for slavery in the U.S., and personal stories of motherhood, family, and land. These new works are poised to generate meaningful artistic, cultural, and social impact.

The Creative Capital Award champions artistic freedom by uplifting risk-taking, underinvested artists with a transformative award that provides up to $50,000 in unrestricted project funding, plus access to multiyear wraparound professional development services and community-building opportunities.

2025 Creative Capital Awardees

VISUAL ARTS
Kathy Aoki, Santa Clara, CA
Susan Chen, Long Island City, NY
Jen de los Reyes and Oscar Rene Cornejo; Ithaca, NY, and Chicago, IL
Katie Grinnan, Los Angeles, CA
Vishal Jugdeo, Los Angeles, CA
Kameron Neal, Brooklyn, NY
Samantha Nye, Philadelphia, PA
Jared Owens, New York, NY
Steve Parker, Austin, TX
Julia Phillips, Chicago, IL
Lee Pivnik, Miami, FL
Ilana Savdie, Brooklyn, NY
Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste, Richmond, VA
Christine Wong Yap, Daly City, CA

TECHNOLOGY
Morehshin Allahyari, Berkeley, CA
Shayla Blatchford, Santa Fe, NM
Alice Bucknell, Los Angeles, CA

PERFORMING ARTS
Thana Alexa, Jackson Heights, NY
Dahlak Brathwaite and Christopher Marianetti; Ridgewood, NY, and Jackson Heights, NY
Ash Fure, Boston, MA
Susie Ibarra, Berlin, Germany
yuniya edi kwon and Holland Andrews; Brooklyn, NY
Kate Ladenheim, Los Angeles, CA
Leilehua Lanzilotti, Honolulu, HI
Damon Locks, Chicago, IL
Rashaad Newsome, Oakland, CA
Paola Prestini, Brooklyn, NY
Ashwini Ramaswamy, Aparna Ramaswamy, and Ranee Ramaswamy; Minneapolis, MN, and La Cañada Flintridge, CA
Zane Rodulfo, Saint Albans, NY
Marike Splint, Los Angeles, CA
Sister Sylvester, New York, NY
Takahiro Yamamoto, Portland, OR

FILM/MOVING IMAGE
Sophia Nahli Allison, Los Angeles, CA
Amber Bemak, Dallas, TX
Lori Felker, Chicago, IL
Ash Goh Hua, Woodhaven, NY
Juan Pablo González, Glendale, CA
Darol Olu Kae, Los Angeles, CA
Angelo Madsen, Burlington, VT
Dolissa Medina, Brownsville, TX
Emily Mkrtichian and Kamee Abrahamian; Salt Lake City, UT, and Demorestville, ON
Clyde Petersen, Anacortes, WA
Tshay, Philadelphia, PA
Janelle VanderKelen, Knoxville, TN

LITERATURE
Thi Bui, New Orleans, LA
Harmony Holiday, Los Angeles, CA
Jonah Mixon-Webster, Flint, MI
Aaron Robertson, Brooklyn, NY
Divya Victor, East Lansing, MI

2025 Creative Capital Panelists
Miriam Bale, Film Programmer and Critic
Philip Bither, Walker Art Center
Chris Boeckmann, Impact Partners
Ashley DeHoyos Sauder, DiverseWorks
Hedi El Kholti, Semiotext(e)
Mariam Ghani, 2015 Creative Capital Awardee
Rujeko Hockley, Whitney Museum of American Art
Jackson Howard, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Leilani Lynch, Museum of Contemporary Art Denver
James McAnally, Counterpublic
Maaza Mengiste, 2019 Creative Capital Awardee
Ceci Moss, Mandeville Art Gallery at University of California San Diego
Ahamefule J. Oluo, 2016 Creative Capital Awardee
Karthik Pandian, 2022 Creative Capital Awardee
Leslie Raymond, Ann Arbor Film Festival
Meiyin Wang, Perelman Performing Arts Center

About Creative Capital

Founded in 1999, Creative Capital defends freedom of expression by funding the creation of new work by risk-taking, underinvested artists in the visual arts, technology, performing arts, film/moving image, literature, as well as multidisciplinary and socially engaged forms in all disciplines. Creative Capital Awards are made via a democratic, national open call process. The Award is designed to help artists realize ambitious new work, to connect their work with public audiences, and to build sustainable practices.

Over 25 years, Creative Capital has provided $55 million in grants and services to 1,010 artists to create 832 new works across the country. More than 75 percent of Creative Capital Awardees in recent years identify as Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, or artists of color, LGBTQIA+, women, and artists with disabilities. Creative Capital also provides a national scaffolding for individual artists. The free, online Creative Capital Curriculum and Artist Opportunities listings serve more than 250,000 artists each year, providing professional development tools to help advance equity in the arts.

Creative Capital grants and services are made possible by the generosity of its Board of Directors, Advisory Council, and with support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Isa Catto and Daniel Shaw, Catto Shaw Foundation, Doris Duke Foundation, Barbara and Amos Hostetter, Wanda Kownacki, Lyda Kuth, Lambent Foundation Fund, a fund of Tides Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Margaret Silva, Paige West, and other generous supporters.