Artadia, a non-profit grantmaking organization and nationwide community of visual artists, curators, and patrons, is thrilled to announce the recipients of the 2023 Chicago Artadia Awards: SaraNoa Mark, Nyeema Morgan, and Julia Phillips.

Artadia is honored to partner with four foundations committed to supporting exceptional artists in Chicago for our 2023 Chicago Awards cycle - the Joyce Foundation, the LeRoy Neiman and Janet Byrne Neiman Foundation, the Pritzker Pucker Family Foundation, and the Walder Foundation.

The Joyce Foundation, the Leroy Neiman and Janet Byrne Neiman Foundation, and the Pritzker Pucker Family Foundation have continued to show their dedication to artistic excellence by supporting Artadia’s $15,000 Awards in their respective names. Sara Noa Mark is the LeRoy Neiman and Janet Byrne Neiman Foundation Artadia Award recipient, Nyeema Morgan is the Joyce Foundation Artadia Award recipient, and Julia Phillips is the Pritzker Pucker Family Foundation Artadia Award recipient.

We are thrilled to announce major support from the Walder Foundation for our Chicago Awards. The Walder Foundation was established by Joseph and Elizabeth Walder to address critical issues impacting our world. The Foundation’s five areas of focus—science innovation, environmental sustainability, the performing arts, migration and immigrant communities, and Jewish life—are an extension of the Walders’ lifelong passions, interests, and their personal and professional experiences.

Additional supporters of the 2023 Chicago Artadia Awards include the Artadia Board of Directors, Artadia Council Members, and individual donors across the country. The decision was reached after an extensive two-tiered jurying process culminating in virtual studio visits with jurors Janet Dees, Steven and Lisa Munster Tananbaum Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Block Museum, Northwestern University, and René Morales, James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator, MCA Chicago.

Juror René Morales remarked, “Artadia’s jurying process, which culminates with intimate studio visits with each of the finalists (as opposed to simply reviewing the materials online), allows for fulsome conversations that serve the artists (and jurors) very well.” Fellow juror Janet Dees said, “The virtual studio visits with the finalists provided the opportunity for deep engagement between the jurors and the artists, allowing us to ask questions that helped to further illuminate aspects of the artists’ practices.”

“Phillips’ work is both poetic and rigorous, yielding uncanny psychological effects while transforming the fragmented body into a charged site of connection between the self and the other,” commented Morales. On Phillips’ practice, Dees remarked “I am compelled by Phillips’ sculptural works, and her ability to investigate and convey complex psychological, physical, and spiritual dynamics with elegant concision.”

On Morgan’s work, Morales said, “Morgan’s deeply searching work speaks to the power dynamics that underlie systems of knowledge, raising piercing questions about identity, representation, and social relations.” “Morgan interrogates and interrupts the social, cultural, and political assumptions baked into structures of academic and popular systems of knowledge, from the familiar format of jokes to the art historical canon,” shared Dees.

In addition to Mark, Morgan, and Phillips, this year’s finalists for the Award included Bobbi Meier, Jacqueline Surdell, and Orkideh Torabi selected by Janet Dees; Craig Hadley, Executive Director and Chief Curator, Dennos Museum Center, Northwestern Michigan College; and Ellen Tani, Independent Curator and Postdoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian American Art Museum.