Past
Grantees

Modesto “Flako” Jimenez is a Dominican-born, Bushwick-raised, multi-hyphenate artist. His work exists in and explores the intersections of identity, language, mediums, cultures, and communities in his personal life and beyond. Flako’s recent work includes Taxilandia, a multifaceted Bushwick community tour and poetic performance experienced from the back of a taxi cab. This work received a New York Times’ Critics Pick in 2021. Flako is the founder of ¡Oye! Group, a nonprofit that serves as an incubator for artists both native and immigrant to New York City. Flako has been selected as a Princeton Hodder Fellow for 2023-2024 and received a 2021 Foundation for Contemporary Arts award in performing arts and theater. He is currently working on Mercedes, a multi-disciplinary art experience exploring the relationships between matriarchy and ancestors, familial bonds and inherited trauma, and how our identity can impact our mental health. Flako received a 2021-2023 Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship in theater.

During this residency, Flako plans to explore local stories from immigrants of different ages and generations in the Aix-Marseille-Provence area, expanding his understanding of immigrant experiences and collecting new stories on this area’s unique cultural diversity. While his work has explored the Caribbean and Latin American immigrant experience in the United States, he is interested in gaining first-hand knowledge of migrant experiences in a European context. He hopes to find points of connection that broaden the scope of his work and contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the interconnectedness of immigrant experiences.

Gamin is a distinguished soloist who tours the world performing both traditional Korean music and cross-disciplinary collaborations. Gamin plays three traditional wind instruments, and is a designated Yisuja, official holder of Important Intangible Cultural Asset No. 46 for Court and Royal Military music. Re-inventing new sonorities from ancient, somewhat restrictive, musical systems, Gamin has received several cultural exchange program grants from Asian Cultural Council, Ministry of Culture, and Republic of Korea. Gamin has collaborated in cross-cultural improvisation with world-acclaimed musicians presenting premieres at Roulette Theater, New School, and Metropolitan Museum. Gamin was a featured artist at the Silkroad concert, Seoul, 2018, performing on-stage with Yo-Yo Ma. Gamin’s scheduled Carnegie Hall début as featured soloist with the Nangye Gugak Orchestra was postponed due to COVID-19. She received a 2021-2023 Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship in music.

During her residency, Gamin is excited by the opportunity to engage with an international community of artists and the inspiration of the unique environment at Cassis. She will work on a new composition focused on developing and extending repertoire based on sanjo tradition, a form of improvised multi-movement solo genre.

Hasabie Kidanu is a visual artist working in printmaking and film animation. Her films have been screened at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, MONO NO AWARE, Jan Van Eyck Akademie, and Film Madrid. She is one-fourth of Digital Ancestors: an independent publishing co-operative based in Brooklyn, New York, and is currently a lecturer of printmaking at the Yale School of Art. Hasabie received a 2019-2021 Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship in visual arts.

During her time at Camargo, Hasabie will develop her new work Prince Ruspoli’s Turaco, an experimental animation set in 1893 within the sub-tropics of eastern Ethiopia. The protagonist, an endangered Turaco bird, tells the tale of its impending extinction while contemplating the relationship between colonial exploration, habitat loss, and diversity. Hasabie plans to spend time in the Calanques National Park and the Museum of African, Oceanic and American Indian Art, studying, meditating, obsessing, and drawing the anatomy and behavior of birds along with flora and plant-life to further the detailed observation practices that fuel her work as an animator.

Simon Liu’s practice centers on cataloging the rapidly evolving psychological and political landscapes within his homeland of Hong Kong through alternate documentary forms, abstract diary films, video installation, and 16mm projection performance. His work has been exhibited at institutions including MOCA LA, SFMoMA, The Shed, PICA, Tai Kwun Contemporary, Everson Museum, Moderna Museet, and is in the permanent collections of MoMA and the M+ Museum. Additionally, his work has been featured in film festivals including New York, Berlin, Toronto, Sundance, Rotterdam, San Francisco, Melbourne, Edinburgh, Jeonju, BFI London, and Hong Kong. Profiles of his work have been featured in Art in America, Cinemascope, New York Magazine, Hyperallergic, and MUBI. Liu is a teacher at Cooper Union, a member of the artist-run film lab Negativeland and is currently editing his first feature film Staffordshire Hoard. Simon received a 2019-2021 Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship in film, video and digital production.

Simon’s focus at the Camargo Residency will be work on a series of 35mm short films utilizing meticulous frame-by-frame animation techniques on physical photochemical materials, and addressing new realities of misinformation, digital consciousness, and cultural disappearance.

Leslie Parker is a dance artist, director, improviser, educator, and performer born in the traditional homeland of the Dakhóta people also known as Twin Cities, MN. Her multiple home/art-bases mainly include the lands of the Lenape peoples (Brooklyn, NY), and Saint Paul, MN. Leslie holds a BFA from Esther Boyer College of Music and Dance at Temple University and an MFA in Dance from Hollins University in partnership with the Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, The Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts, and The Dresden Frankfurt Company in Frankfurt, Germany. As a dance creative, Leslie highlights unique individual contributions, digs into collective memory to engage with the world more imaginatively, and embodies an aesthetic that encompasses an organic form influenced by the Black and African Diaspora: Traditional West African, Black/African American vernacular/social dance, Improvisation, and Contemporary/Modern techniques derived from multiple continents. She received a 2017 Bessie award for Outstanding performer, a 2022 McKnight Fellowship for Choreographers, and a 2021 NDP Production grant. Leslie received a 2019-2021 Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship in dance. For more details, go to www.leslieparkerdance.com.

While at Camargo, Leslie will explore more deeply the practice of Black Dance Improvisation. As an opportunity to participate in a collective of international artists specializing in various forms of art and whose lived experiences reflect multicultural lives, her practice will include workshops stemming from collective learning to cultivate generative processes inspired by personal narratives. Leslie’s exploration prioritizes the futurity of Blackness and dance through collective remembrance as an embodied experience.

Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay is a Lao American poet and playwright. CNN’s “United Shades of America” host W. Kamau Bell called her work “revolutionary.” She is best known for her Kung Fu Zombies play cycle. Her work has been presented by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, Theater Mu, Walking Shadow Theatre Company, and elsewhere. She’s currently a fellow with the Bush Foundation, Mellon Foundation, and the Center for Cultural Power. Saymoukda was a recent writer in residence at Hedgebrook and Djerassi by invitation of the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network. Saymoukda received a 2021-2023 Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship in theater. For more details, go to www.refugenius.net or @refugenius.

During her residency, Saymoukda will conduct research, write, and connect with the local culture and people in Cassis. To better inform her new musical, In the Camps: A Refugee Musical, she plans to do closer readings and research of academic writing, news articles, reports and data from decision-making bodies, and legislation that has aided refugees from Southeast Asia.