Leonard Suryajaya and Derrick Woods-Morrow Receive 2018 Chicago Artadia Award

SAIC alumni Leonard Suryajaya (MFA 2015) and Derrick Woods-Morrow (MFA 2016) have both received the 2018 Chicago Artadia Award. As the 2018 Chicago Artadia Awardees, Suryajaya and Woods-Morrow will receive $10,000 in unrestricted funds as well as access to the ongoing benefits of the Artadia Awards program. Additionally, Artadia’s booth at EXPO CHICAGO will feature original artwork by the two awardees. 

Darby English, Carl Darling Buck Professor of Art History, Modern and Contemporary Art, Cultural Studies at the Universty of Chicago, and adjunct curator, Museum of Modern Art was in the jury. English observes that Woods-Morrow "modifies relations of power" and brings together "elements of sexuality and interracial affinity as well as poetic engagements" with questions of how "things and beings of the world change as they move—and are moved.” In Suryajaya's work "the boundaries between the private and the public, the frivolous and the political, the authentic and the imitation, and the celebrated and the abject are continuously renegotiated.”

In its ninth award cycle in Chicago, the Chicago Artadia Award applications are open to artists living in the city for at least two years, across media, and regardless of what stage they are at in their career.