$60,000 of project support for Chicago-area artists

The Ignite Fund, supporting experimental and groundbreaking visual arts-based work by Chicago-area artists and artist-led collectives, has announced its 2025 cohort of grantees. Six artists and four artist-led collectives are receiving a combined total of $60,000 to support the creation and implementation of new, public-facing works.

Open to artists in Chicago’s six-county metropolitan area, The Ignite Fund received 70 applications that were reviewed by a national jury panel. The jury’s selections align with The Ignite Fund’s goal of prioritizing projects that center the visual arts, promote collaboration, raise awareness around social justice issues, engage local communities, and incorporate accessibility services in public presentations. Complete descriptions of this year’s grantee cohort and jury panel are available on the Ignite Fund website: www.ignitefund.org.

The Ignite Fund is administered by Chicago-based nonprofit organization 3Arts as part of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Regional Regranting Program.

The 2025 Ignite Fund grantees and projects are:

Alonso Galue (he/him)
Push-On: The prophet of the extra-life
$6,000
Push-On: The prophet of the extra-life is a multidisciplinary visual arts project that looks at the possibility of a new chance in life by using gaming metaphors and post-colonial folkloric traditions. Consisting of sculptures and monumental paintings of deities from syncretic traditions this immersive and engaging project centers a pin-ball machine as an altar of the XXIst century.

Brandon Calhoun (he/him)
Through Their Eyes: In the Shoes of Black Women
$6,000
Through Their Eyes: In the Shoes of Black Women is a dance layered visual installment that uncovers the process of a Black woman-led dance company. Through a street anthropology approach, filmmaker Brandon Calhoun will immerse himself in the people and work of Praize Productions Inc., a 15-year-old dance organization in Chicago. The documentation will then be shared on YouTube and at two intimate events– one at the Reva & David Logan Center for the Arts and the other at the Newberry Library.

CollⒶpse Consulting
Everyone’s (A) Critic
$6,000
Everyone’s (A) Critic is a new project by CollⒶpse Consulting a group of emerging artists appropriating the power of the critic to legitimize the kinds of visual art we find vital. Inspired by ‘00s artist-run initiatives at galleries such as Julius Caesar and Reena Spaulings, CollⒶpse Consulting believes that art criticism should more closely resemble an immersive art experience or subcultural party than a magazine article behind a paywall. This project is just the beginning.

Dorrah Alharbi (she/her)
Objects of Memory
$6,000
Rooted in the Arab tradition of oral storytelling, Objects of Memory is an object-based oral history initiative dedicated to documenting and preserving the stories of this unique community by conducting interviews with first-generation residents, documenting their experiences in the diaspora, and recording the personal objects they have carried with them. Objects of Memory will create a visual archive, narrated through the participants’ objects that tell the cultural history, memory, and identity of Little Palestine.

Kenn Cook Jr. (he/him)
From The Westside, With Love – Outdoor Exhibition
$6,000
From The Westside, With Love – Outdoor Exhibition is a traveling public art project adapted from an upcoming photo zine of the same name. The exhibition brings large-scale photographs into the heart of Chicago’s West Side, transforming streets, parks, and community spaces into open-air galleries making art free and accessible to all.

Laurel Hauge (she/they)
Help Me Help You
$6,000
Help Me Help You gives time back to participants by offering assistance within a designated space. Visitors are invited to use the time they might have set aside to “see art” to take care of tasks related to the maintenance of their professional, civic, and personal standings. These are often the tasks which people avoid, delay, or dread: such as updating a resume, paying a parking ticket, signing divorce papers, or other neglected forms of life’s admin. The project repositions the artist as an assistant rather than an author, transforming the exhibition space into one of quiet utility, responsiveness, and service.

Leticia Pardo (she/her)
greetings from Chicagoacán (stories from within)
$6,000
greetings from Chicagoacán (stories from within) gathers oral histories and casts of domestic spaces belonging to members of Chicago’s Mexican diaspora, forming a visual and auditory archive where narratives and fragments reflect on spaces—real and imagined, present and longed for—that anchor a sense of home. The project explores how migration reshapes the built environment, and how longing, adaptation, and memory endure. Voices recorded in oral histories inform a series of casts taken from domestic surfaces, materializing these stories in both sound and architectural form.

Marimacha Monarca Press
TRANSplantas – carrying belonging
$6,000
TRANSplantas – carrying belonging is a print exchange portfolio between queer artists in community around Chicago + la Ciudad de Mexico. The exchange is organized by Tortillería Gráfica (CDMX) + Marimacha Monarca Press (Chicago). This portfolio seeks to illustrate queer ecological visions, visions that disrupt binary frameworks and recognize fluidity + otherness. Sharing print invocations for past, present + future environmental justice, cross pollination / hybridity, and human, flora + fauna transmigration. Honoring our queer ecosystems that are both as flamboyant as poison dart frogs and as underground as mycelial networks.

The Adoptea Collective
Spill the tea
$6,000
As an all-adoptee artist collective by adoptees for adoptees, The Adoptea challenges the sugar-coated narrative of adoption and centers the adoptee diaspora through art, critical dialogue, and community-building. In this next phase, The Adoptea collective will expand its work by focusing on outreach, launching a website, and developing public programming to amplify adoptee voices.

John H. Guevara & Xavier Robles Armas
Glimmers: Latinx Illuminations
$6,000
Glimmers: Latinx Illuminations highlights the current waves of Latine visual and performative practices of today. Focusing on artists whose works are shimmering in critical brilliance, this event is both an ephemeral visual showcase, performance, and a panel discussion on Latine and LatAm artistic practices. Taking a pulse on Chicago, it hopes to not only showcase Latine and LatAm performance and contemporary art now but strengthen the national network that connects projects–across shared dialogues and labor.