The Guggenheim Fellowship has been awarded annually since 1925. According to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation website, awards are “intended for mid-career individuals who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts and exhibit great promise for their future endeavors.” They just awarded the 2023 fellowships to 171 scientists, writers, scholars, and writers. One of winners this year was Houston artist Jamal Cyrus.
I don’t know how deep Cyrus’s Houston roots are, but he went to High School for Performing and Visual Arts. He was a member of the class of 1991. So pretty deep, it seems.
Cyrus was a the member of an important collective, Otabenga Jones & Associates. The other members were Dawolu Jabari Anderson, Kenya Evans and Robert A. Pruitt. I think other artists participated as well. Otabenga Jones & Associates was formed in 2002. The collective made its biggest splash by being selected for the 2006 Whitney Biennial.
I first became aware of Cyrus in 2011, when he had a show at the Bryan Miller Gallery called DKONKR. I was impressed and we ran a review of this exhibit (written by Dean Liscum).
I’ve written about Cyrus’s work on occasion, too. I saw his performance of Texas Fried Tenor at the CAMH in 2012, in which he deep fried a tenor saxophone on the CAMH’s porch. I was particular impressed by The Jackson in Your House in 2014, which Cyrus produced in collaboration with Walter Stanciell, a 3rd ward sign painter.
I liked their collaboration so much, I decided to ask them to be in Exu, a magazine I published in 2015. They produced a piece of text created in a sign-painting display style called Respect!
The Guggenheim Fellowship comes with cash attached. Winners receive between $30,000 to $45,000. The 171 fellows come from all over the United States and Canada. The Foundation receives about 3000 applications every year.
With 171 winners, we might expect a few from Houston, but there are only 2. The other Houston winner is Celeste Bedford Walker, a playwright. I am not really familiar with her work, but congratulations to Ms. Walker!
Jamal Cyrus richly deserves his Guggenheim Fellowship. Houston is lucky to have him here.
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