The 2023 Soros Arts Fellows plan to fight climate change and other global issues with public art

NEW YORK (AP) — Palestinian artist Nida Sinnokrot, one of 18 artists receiving the 2023 Soros Arts Fellowships from the Open Society Foundations on Tuesday, says that art provides hope and resilience, even in the midst of war. 

“It’s our duty to find the strength to keep the despair at bay in the face of the unimaginable,” said Sinnokrot, who is the co-founder of Sakiya, a Palestinian academy of agrarian traditions and contemporary art, and a faculty member in Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Art, Culture, and Technology Program. “We have to, as artists, find the courage to disrupt convention, practice the spreading of hope and cultivate new stories and imaginaries that challenge divisive binaries.” 

Members of this year’s class of Soros Arts Fellows, including Sinnokrot, will receive $100,000 in unrestricted funding from Open Society Foundations to develop a public art project that confronts climate change with community-based solutions in the next 18 months, said Tatiana Mouarbes, Open Society’s Team Manager for Culture, Art, and Expression. 

“There’s a clear need for bold action, for justice and for equity-based solutions to ensure a more regenerative and life-sustaining world,” said Mouarbes, adding that “systems of global colonialism, white supremacy and capitalism have long stripped the environment of its natural resources.”