Lori Waselchuk
Lori Waselchuk is a community-driven visual storyteller and curator whose work creates fresh forms of collaboration, drawing from many disciplines and resources, to create experiences that describe and convene community. Her work is exhibited internationally and is part of many collections including the New Orleans Museum of Art, Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture, and South African National Gallery. Waselchuk also curates and coordinates exhibitions and special projects that prioritize creative social engagement including the Women’s Mobile Museum (WMM) with Zanele Muholi and ten Philadelphia women-identifying artists; and Grace Before Dying a collaborative quilt and photographic project created with incarcerated men about a hospice program in Louisiana State Penitentiary. Lori’s work has been generously supported through grants and awards, including the 2014 Leeway Foundation Transformation Award, 2012 Pew Fellowship for the Arts, 2010 Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities grant, 2009 Aaron Siskind Foundation’s Fellowship, 2008 Open Society Foundations Documentary Photography Project grants, 2008-2011, and the 2004 Southern African Gender and Media Award.
Awarded Grants
2019
Window of Opportunity Grant (WOO)
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Overview
Lori Waselchuk has been invited to participate in the Santa Fe Art Institute's 2020 Labor International Thematic Residency Program. SFAI brings together 67 artists, creative practitioners, content experts, and innovative thinkers from 21 countries to "consider what vitality, prosperity, and sustainability might look like beyond profit; to envision new systems for 'making a living' that elevate all of humanity and infuse our world with freedom, compassion, and harmony; and that reflect the profoundly generative acts of labor." Lori’s visual arts practice is rooted in community building and investigating new models of collaboration that challenge a capitalist narrative – and this residency is a significant opportunity to participate in conversations with artists about ideas of labor that have been central in her work.
Along with learning from the ideas and experiences of the other artists-in-residence, Lori will reflect on the impact of the Women’s Mobile Museum in a written piece that assembles the lessons and experiences borne from the project into a resource that could be read as a model for possible WMM cohorts or for other organizations wishing to create similar projects. In addition to returning with many new tools and connections to support her collaborative practice, this residency will also provide a much-needed and supportive block of time and space to focus on her practice as she transitions from coordinating the ambitious, year-long Women's Mobile Museum, to resuming work on her project,Them That Do, an ongoing collaboration with Philadelphia's block captains that focuses on the impacts of community stewardship.
2013
Leeway Transformation Award (LTA)
Related grantees
Overview
Lori is interested in making photographs that describe connection and explore how our humanity is defined by our relationships with one another. Her projects primarily focus on themes of economic injustice, violence against women, and mass incarceration. She looks for ways to tell these stories through a lens of possibility by demonstrating how people, when acting together, make change or provide support from within. Lori created project-based works that are interactive. She later exhibits the work with community input that is accessible and engaging to diverse audiences, with the hope that they will ignite and contribute to conversation. Lori is a founding member of the New Orleans Photo Alliance, which was created to build community and opportunities for artists devastated by Hurricane Katrina.
