Three Queens residents — Modesto Jimenez (Ridgewood), Jude Chehab (Richmond Hill), and Arthur Oh (Woodside) — are among the 188 recent recipients of extremely prestigious Guggenheim Fellowships. Each one receives a monetary stipend to pursue independent work.
Oh has had solo exhibitions at such venues as Eleni Koroneou Gallery (Athens), Kathryn Brennan Gallery (New York), IT Park Gallery (Taiwan), and Taipei Fine Arts Museum. Plus, his work has appeared in group exhibitions at the Grazer Kunstverein (Austria), LAXART, the Museum of Contemporary Art (Detroit), the Presentation House (Vancouver), and Queens Museum.
The Taiwanese-American is also an associate professor of photography at Parsons School of Design, a division of the New School.
Chehab is a filmmaker who explores the esoteric, spiritual, and unspoken. She has worked as director of photography on films in Somalia, Sudan, and Pakistan and was an associate producer of Sesame Street’s show for Syrian refugees. The Lebanese-American has also collaborated with the BBC, Hot Docs, Refinery29, Oxfam, and Doctors Without Borders.
Jimenez, who is known as “Flako,” is a Dominican-born, Bushwick-raised, poet, playwright, educator, actor, producer, and director. His focus is on using art to address the social and political changes affecting Latin American communities. His current project, Taxilandia, draws on his nine years of driving a taxicab and his documentation of conversations with passengers, residents, locals, and newcomers.
His theater company, Oye Group, is now working with troupes all over the country to develop versions of Taxilandia specific to their cities. The piece is devised in three phases, beginning with a series of virtual salons with local artists whose work intersects with gentrification. Once public gathering is allowed, the final phase includes live presentations and an interactive gallery.
Flako has taught theater and poetry in NYC public schools for more than 10 years. In 2015, he founded Shake on the Block, a seven-week Shakespeare workshop for teens. He’s also working on Margarita, Mercedes y Dementia, a multi-disciplinary memory play exploring the relationships between matriarchy and ancestors, familial bonds, inherited trauma, and how identity can impact mental health.
Great, but what is a Guggenheim Fellow?
Every year, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation’s board of trustees selects Fellows through a rigorous application and peer review process. Tapped on the basis of career achievement and promise, the 2024 Fellows represent 52 disciplines and artistic fields, 84 academic institutions, 38 states, the District of Columbia, and four Canadian provinces. They range in age from 28 to 89.
Click here for the full list of 2024 Fellows.
The Foundation, which was established by Senator Simon Guggenheim and Olga Guggenheim in memory of their son John Simon in 1925, provides a generous monetary stipend to each Fellow so he or she can create art without the stress of having to raise money. Over the years, it has awarded more than $400 million to more than 19,000 Fellows, including Nobel laureates, members of all the national academies, winners of the Pulitzer Prize, Fields Medal, Turing Award, Bancroft Prize, National Book Award, and other internationally recognized honors.