With her goal to explore contemporary issues of social justice through tech-informed art making, Miami artist Antonia Wright now has an unrestricted grant of $50,000 to pursue her work.
Wright, whose multimedia practice involves video, coding, performance, sound, light and sculpture to explore systems of power using the body as a principal element of her work, was one of five artists awarded nationally for the Knight Foundation 2025 Arts + Tech Fellowship.
She is the only Miami artist and is joined by three artists selected from Detroit and one from Philadelphia.
READ MORE: Poet Aja Monet's 'Florida Water' reflects on art, activism and spiritual connection to Florida
The Arts + Tech Fellowship, launched in 2021, supports artists exploring innovative approaches to technology and new media. Kristina Newman-Scott, vice president for arts at Knight Foundation, said in a prepared statement that the fellowship is about investing in “visionary artists whose practices challenge dominant narratives, expand civic imagination and invite us to see and feel differently.”
For Wright, receiving unrestricted funding has much significance especially at a changing moment in the overall arts landscape.
“We are speaking at a time when the arts are being devalued nationally, and funding is being cut. (Florida Gov.) Ron DeSantis slashed $32 million in arts funding from Florida’s budget,” said Wright.
She is already working on several new projects. “Many experiment with immersive installations that blend sound, light, performance, and technology,” said Wright.
The funding from Knight Foundation will enable the artist to continue to collaborate with experts in other fields, too, she said.
“I love being based in Miami. My practice is very collaborative, and I work with terrific people here.” Wright is also expanding her practice and is working with a choreographer for the first time, calling the partnership “exciting.”
The weight of an award that serves to combine art and technology is exceptionally important for Wright to move her practice forward.
“I am inspired by the lineage of feminist performance art, but now I can merge my body-based practice through digital constructs,” she said.
One of her most recent works, “State of Labor” (2024), a multichannel immersive sound installation exhibited at Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), was made in response to the United States Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. The generative sound art composition used data sonification to protest changing laws around access to safe and legal abortions with code programmed to respond to the average distance a person would need to travel to receive reproductive care and a sound element collected of women during active labor.
The “Women in Labor” soundscape was also featured in an exhibit at Spinello Projects. Produced by an algorithm she developed with data reflecting miles women must travel in 11 states with abortion bans in order to receive an abortion, the mileage data was randomly combined with soft and more intense sounds of 11 women in labor, including her own.
To date, the Knight Arts + Tech Fellowship program has awarded 20 artists, each spanning various practices, disciplines, and mediums. According to the Knight Foundation, their work was grounded in storytelling, speculative thinking, and community engagement.
This year’s cohort builds on the legacy—foregrounding collaboration, education, and cross-disciplinary experimentation as they shape the evolving landscape of art and technology, according to Newman-Scott.
Wright, a Cuban-American artist born in Miami received her MFA in Poetry from The New School in New York City in 2004; she earned a postgraduate degree in photography from the International Center of Photography (ICP) in 2008 and, in 2024, earned a second MFA in Art Practice from the School of Visual Arts.
“I plan to continue creating and exhibiting work in this dynamic contemporary art scene,” she said.
An unrestricted grant places no specific limitation on how funds can be used, allowing artists to use the funds however they choose. For Wright, the unrestricted access allows the artist to have the freedom to cover costs for “ambitious and risky projects.”
ArtburstMiami.com is a nonprofit news partner of WLRN, providing news on theater, dance, visual arts, music and the performing arts.
