Creative Capital

A default icon for a node which has no primary image

Location

New York City, New York, United States of America

Description

Creative Capital is a nonprofit, grantmaking organization with the mission to fund artists in the creation of groundbreaking new work, to amplify the impact of their work, and to foster sustainable artistic careers.

Creative Capital. “Mission and Impact.” Accessed April 8, 2023. https://creative-capital.org/mission/.
History

In 1999, Creative Capital was established as a nonprofit public charity after the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) ended the majority of its grants for individual artists. Archibald L. Gillies, then President of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, believed that fostering artists’ freedom of expression was critical to democracy. At the heart of our organization is a deep commitment to a democratic process of grantmaking that is open call, national, and accessible to individual artists working in the visual arts, performing arts, technology, film/moving image, literature, socially engaged and multidisciplinary forms.

Creative Capital was created with the express purpose of funding the creation of experimental, innovative new projects via direct financial support to individual artists. Ruby Lerner, Founding President & Executive Director, developed a new model for cultural philanthropy that adopted elements of the venture capital ethos, in particular the ways in which entrepreneurs in the tech sector were being holistically supported.

Creative Capital. “Mission and Impact.” Accessed April 8, 2023. https://creative-capital.org/mission/.
Work funded
  • Two shirtless people stand in front of each other and stare intently at one another. The person on the right has light skin and short brown hair with the sides faded. They are touching the chest of the person on the left with their left hand. The person on the left has light skin with a beard and a hairy chest wearing a thin gold necklace.

    Desire Lines

    film/video, 2024

    An underground narrative has long been whispered among transgender men: after coming out as trans, many of us develop an attraction for other men. In this hybrid documentary, history comes alive when an Iranian-American transman time-travels on a dizzying quest to unravel his own sexual desires. As Ahmad approaches age 60, his long-suppressed desires for other men become impossible to ignore. Having grown up in an era when homosexual activity could block one’s access to medical transition, he can’t help but wonder whether his sexuality and gender identity are completely at odds. He turns to the LGBT archives for answers, where he meets a 20-something trans archivist named Kieran. As Ahmad falls deeper into the archive, he is quite literally sucked into the text—becoming a time-traveler who participates in the queer cruising history he reads about. This fictional narrative is interwoven with archival gems and a trove of contemporary oral histories from a diverse group of transmen across North America. These participants candidly discuss the evolution of their desires and illuminate their struggles with gender (non)conformity, fetishization, transphobia, sexual racism, and safer sex. Desire Lines pushes against binaries—fiction vs. non-fiction, reality vs. fantasy, public vs. private—in order to highlight the fallacy of “purity” that undergirds colonialist notions of discrete categories of being (or genre); embracing bewilderment as a liberatory strategy for trans representation.