Interlace Grant Fund is proud to announce the nine recipients of its 2025 Project Grants, an annual initiative which supports visual arts projects produced and presented in the Providence area. The grants, totaling $54,000, support new and experimental work by local artists with visions for projects that might fall outside of traditional arts funding opportunities. Collaboration is at the heart of Project Grant artists’ work–with fellow artists, local communities, or sites. The cohort’s proposed projects include publications, photography, public sculpture, printmaking, installation, and beyond. They will explore themes including world-building, healthcare, intergenerational storytelling, and mutual aid.
“Now in our fifth year of funding, we are consistently blown away by the projects proposed by Providence-area artists.” said Xander Marro & Pippi Zornoza, Co-Directors of Dirt Palace Public Projects. “We are grateful for this opportunity to support artists whose work takes a variety of approaches to discussing relevant, interesting, and challenging ideas,”
“Special thanks go to this remarkable group of grantees, all the thoughtful artists who applied, our insightful panelists, and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for their sustained support of this regional regranting initiative. The Interlace Grant Fund is administered by Dirt Palace Public Projects and Interlace’s dedicated staff. Together, we are pleased to support and amplify the community-driven dedication of Providence visual artists.”
Interlace will celebrate the 2025 Project Grantees at an awards ceremony held at the Metcalf Auditorium at the RISD Museum at 5:30pm on Thursday, January 23, 2025. Learn more about grantees, projects and the awards ceremony in the text that follows.
Awarded Artists & Projects
Eating with the RI Ecosystem: A Visual Guide to Eating the Whole Fish | Annie Chen with Zoe Lee
As part of a broader conversation of advancing climate action as a community-driven cultural shift, Annie Chen will produce a community workshop and illustrated zine that will serve as a visual guide to local Providence residents on eating the whole fish. She will collaborate with designer Zoe Lee and Kate Masury from Eating with the Ecosystem for the project, which aims to engage local seafood professionals and the Providence community to promote sustainable food systems.
ESTAMOS AQUÍ: Threads of Memory and Belonging | Grechel Rosado
Grechel Rosado will bring a traveling screenprinting cart to various Latino communities in Providence, paying homage to Puerto Rican street vendors. The project involves a series of pop-up workshops where public participants will create and print designs reflecting the Latin experience. These prints will then form a memory wall showcased at a culminating exhibition. The project aims to preserve and celebrate Latino cultural storytelling, addressing themes of community erasure, resilience, and belonging.
Keeping Palestine Amplified Through Beauty, Enamel, Fabric, and Traditional Motifs | Joanna Cortez
Joanna Cortez will produce a series of fabric and enamel pieces featuring motifs found in traditional Palestinian tatreez (a form of traditional and modern Palestinian embroidery) in order to showcase the rich history and beauty to a western audience. Her aim is to join voices with so many other artists in keeping the contemporary and traditional beauty of Palestine visible in the US art world, in Providence, and beyond.
We Live Until Publication | Jordan Seaberry
Jordan Seaberry’s recent painting exhibition, We Live Until, was a series of paintings made in conversation with patients in hospice care. For this project, Seaberry will create a publication that will bring the exhibition images to the participating hospice patients and families who were unable to attend the exhibition in person.
Look Outside: Building Alternative Worlds Through Collaborative Art-Making | Sara Inácio
Look Outside, is a collaboration between Sara Inácio and artists from Outsider Collective, a community studio centering artists with disabilities. Together, they will imagine new worlds and open up windows into alternate ways of seeing through a collaborative installation, a series of zines, and public pop-ups inviting others to co-create with them. This work will challenge normative ideas of professional art, encourage new relationships and elevate diverse ways of making and engaging with the world.
The Re:Center | Serra Fels
The Re:Center is a site-specific wooden sculpture featuring tessellating geometric triangles surrounding a functional sauna for four, set in a private Providence garden. This installation invites Providence’s queer communities to engage in private, small-group reflections on expanding queer joy through a ritual of social self-care. Each session will contribute a single photograph and paragraph of reflection to be compiled into a limited-edition book for all contributors.
TIERRA FUTURA: Becoming Human, Becoming Land | Shey ‘Ri Acu’ Rivera Rios
For this project, Shey ‘Ri Acu” Rivera Rios will make a new body of work created as a decolonial and embodied un-archive of stories and anecdotes from lineage and land in Boriken and in Providence; a visual vessel for an experience of uprooting, migration, and building home. The body of work consists of 6 new annotated photographs and a new 15min performance art piece as manifestations of this un-archive, presented as a public exhibit.
A Well Lit Path | Ti Dinh with Amy Ramos
Ti Dinh and Amy Ramos will produce a series of four textile-based lamps as they explore the textile histories of their motherlands, Vietnam and Guatemala. They will research indigenous textile practices and postcolonial influences on those practices, including irreparable harm enacted by the United States, in order to explore their questions around their families’ immigration journeys to the US.
The Mutual Aid Altar | Vuthy Lay
Vuthy Lay will build a public shrine that distributes free health and rescue supplies anonymously 24/7 year round. This site-specific installation builds upon the visual language of diasporic Buddhist altar building traditions. The Mutual Aid Altar aims to increase access to crucial resources, while inviting the broader community to reconsider harmful narratives and stigmas surrounding sexual health and addiction.