YoungArts Unveils 2024-2025 Fellows

​YoungArts reveald the 2024-2025 YoungArts Fellows, the institution's most substantial award given to five artists from around the country practicing across disciplines. Each fellow will receive up to $45,000 in unrestricted funding, plus a combination of experiences that advance the artist's goals, including residencies, mentorship, public works-in-progress events, informal community gatherings and technical demonstrations. The 2024-25 YoungArts Fellows are: Hanna Ali, a 2016 YoungArts award winner in Visual Arts; Tyné Angela Freeman, a 2012 and 2013 YoungArts winner in Voice; Amanda Krische, a 2012 YoungArts winner in Dance and U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts; Samora la Perdida, a 2015 YoungArts winner in Theater and U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts; and joseph webb, a 1996 YoungArts winner in Dance and U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts.

“YoungArts is proud to support these extraordinary artists who push boundaries, evolve their artistic practices, and contribute to their communities,” said Lauren Slone, vice president, artistic programs at YoungArts. “The YoungArts Fellowship is the most comprehensive award within YoungArts that offers resources dedicated to artists' work, well-being, interconnectivity in the field, continued learning and experimentation in their chosen forms. This program furthers YoungArts' support of award winners throughout their careers and across disciplines, geographical locations, and stages of development to move their boldest ideas forward.”

The YoungArts Fellowship is awarded annually through an application process. All submissions are reviewed by an anonymous panel of artists and staff. Recent Fellows include Leo Castañeda, a 2006 YoungArts award winner in Visual Arts; Peter Eom, a 2013 YoungArts award winner in Classical Music and U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts; and James Sprang, a 2008 YoungArts award winner in Visual Arts.

About the 2024-2025 YoungArts Fellows

Hanna Ali (2016 YoungArts Winner in Visual Arts)

YoungArts Artist Technology Fellow supported by The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation

Hanna Ali is an interdisciplinary artist and spatial designer who creates immersive environments exploring feminine identity, technology and storytelling. Raised in Miami, her work is deeply inspired by her mother's aspirations to become an artist, driving her to design spaces where women can reclaim their voices. Hanna founded Hoechitecture, a studio focused on elevating stories of women and marginalized groups, collaborating with icons like Kehlani and Kanye West. Her work, including a virtual gallery for Genevieve Cohn with The Mindy Solomon Gallery, reflects her innovative approach to performance and spatial design. Informed by her time at Rem Koolhaas' Office of Metropolitan Architecture, Hanna's projects continue to push boundaries through transformative art and visionary spaces.

Dancing Lab: Immersive Spaces & Alternate Places—facilitated by program partner National Center for Choreography - Akron (NCCAkron), an organization supporting the research and development of new work in dance—will bring together NCCAkron artists Raphael Xavier and Bridgman|Packer Dance, and YoungArts Fellow Hanna Ali, to create a learning community to explore digital exhibitions and reflect on whether these experiences are the next frontier for arts exhibitions and presentations. Is it possible for immersive spaces to become the next normalized practice for choreographers to "tour" their work, for visual artists to build new worlds, and for sound artists to create transformative sonic experiences? Ali and fellow artists will engage with these questions over the course of a year, including in three convenings featuring guest technologists.

Tyné Angela Freeman (2012, 2013 YoungArts Winner in Voice)

YoungArts Fellow supported by the Giving Bee Foundation

Tyné Angela Freeman is a musician, researcher, and instrument technician. Since 2010, she has released five albums of original music and published a novel. She has performed across the U.S. and internationally, including at The Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage Series and opening for artists such as Vanessa Williams and Lalah Hathaway. She is a two-time TEDx speaker. Freeman studied music at Dartmouth College. Her current research is focused on building musical instruments with sustainable materials.

Freeman's Sustainable Symphony focuses on the construction of musical instruments using sustainable materials, specifically a carbon fiber composite filament that contains 100% recycled material, drawing from her experience as a researcher and instrument technician. Showcased in a culminating performance, the constructed instruments highlight Freeman's expansive practice and explore creative solutions to problems of accessibility, functionality, cost, and environmental sustainability.

Amanda Krische (2012 YoungArts Winner in Dance & U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts)

YoungArts Fellow supported by the American Foundation for Bulgaria

Amanda Krische is an interdisciplinary movement artist, writer, educator, and herbalist who creates socially engaged performances at the intersection of ethnography, ritual practice, gender studies, surrealism, mythopoetics, neuroscience, and ecology. Through dance and multidisciplinary performance, she creates transformative ritual experiences that tell spectacular stories of the everyday while imagining new possibilities of individual and collective healing. Her work has been shown at the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, Joe's Pub, and The Kitchen. Trained as an herbalist under the tutelage of noted practitioners such as Robin Rose Bennett, Marysia Miernowska, and Sajah Popham, Amanda also devotes her practice to bringing people into an ecological relationship within their own bodies, exploring the possibilities of healing and belonging.

Krische's project focuses on the development of a new interdisciplinary performance company that bridges communication between the arts, sciences, humanities, and healing arts to facilitate community care and connection. Through dynamic programming that includes workshops, social practice, and interdisciplinary performance, the company will activate a performance space that invites experiential embodiment, connection, and belonging. The project will also deepen work on two existing pieces: Open Invitation, a performance piece that tells stories of the everyday while addressing shifting perspectives of relationship amidst our ecological crisis, and Violence is not the home I live in, a long-durational performance and social practice work created with and for women who have experienced sexual violence. Drawing inspiration from her familial ties to the Balkan region, Krische's work will reimagine rituals for community healing.

Samora la Perdida (2015 YoungArts Winner in Theater & U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts)

YoungArts Fellow

Samora la Perdida is a trilingual music theater writer and performer, crafting the roles she craved growing up as a trans afro-latina. She is a 2024 recipient of the Princess Grace Award in theater. She starred in the 2022 Off-Broadway productions of David Mendizábal's  Notes on Killing Seven Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Board Members at Soho Rep, Quiara Alegría Hudes' My Broken Language at Signature Theatre, as well as Tina Landau's A Transparent Musical at the Mark Taper Forum in 2023. She is also set to star in Tina Romero's upcoming horror comedy feature, Queens of the Dead. Her TEDxTalk, Do Latines Need to Speak Spanish? Finding Your Lost Mother Tongue, features spoken word and music from her upcoming bilingual brujería musical: Spanglish Sh!t. 

Spanglish Sh!t tells the story of Brujita, a trans teenage Puerto Rican witch who moves from Puerto Rico to New Jersey. When Brujita sacrifices her Spanish to fit in at her new, all-white suburban high school, she loses her magical powers as a result. Spanglish Sh!t is a fantastical reimagining of queer immigrant children's linguistic tribulations in the United States, inspired by oral histories, research, and la Perdida's own lived experience. Bringing together ancestral Puerto Rican rhythms of bomba and plena with influences of salsa and reggaeton, this project creates a unique “evolucionario hybrid” that celebrates the resilience of immigrant children and their journeys to reclaim their cultural identities. Spanglish Sh!t has been developed with Berkeley Rep, NYSCA, Baryshnikov Arts Center and En Garde Arts.

joseph webb (1996 YoungArts Winner in Dance & U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts)

YoungArts Fellow supported by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund

joseph webb is a NYC based interdisciplinary artist rooted in the African diaspora. His current work engages with the political soundscape of lovers rock reggae and its role in the liberation and resilience of Black love. An award-winning artist and educator, he has showcased his talents in the Tony Award-winning Broadway production “Bring in ‘da Noise Bring in ‘da Funk” and Martin Scorsese's film “Bringing Out the Dead” among numerous others. His work is best captured by the New York Times dance and cultural critic Roslyn Sulcas who regards joseph “a natural star: a fabulous tap dancer who also raps, sings…”

webb's project, prayers for a hopeless romantic: lovers rock, is a performance piece that honors the liberation and eroticism of Black love through vernacular dance and Black diasporic language. Celebrating the reggae sounds and culture of the Lovers Rock era from the 70s and 80s, this project blends different Black dance styles including tap, blues, early dancehall movement, and original spoken word.

To post a comment, you must register and login.