MFA alumni Xiying Yang ’08 and Honglei Li ’07 among 95 artists selected out of 2,606 applicants
UMass Dartmouth alumni Xiying “Lily” Yang ’08 and Honglei Li ’07 are among 95 artists to be awarded Fellowships by the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA). Only two percent of applicants receive this honor. This year’s finalists were selected by discipline-specific peer panels from an applicant pool of 2,606. Lily and Honglei, who are also married, were recognized in the interdisciplinary work discipline. Lily received her MFA in Design and Digital Media from UMass Dartmouth’s College of Visual & Performing Arts (CVPA) in 2008. Honglei received his MFA in Fine Arts and Painting in 2007.
Lily and Honglei work as an immigrant artist collaborative taking an interdisciplinary approach to link Chinese cultural heritage with social and environmental research. As a collective, they produce cross-platform projects reflecting upon contemporary China in the context of a global age. Their multimedia artworks embrace both traditional art forms and new technologies such as digital animation, Virtual Reality in cyberspace, and Augmented Reality on mobile devices.
Lily and Honglei’s artworks have been presented at numerous national and international venues including the Museum of Art and Design in New York, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, the Asian American Art Alliance in New York, the Museum of Ara Pacis in Rome, the He Xiangning Art Museum in China, the Trondheim Electronic Arts Centre in Norway, the Electronic Language International Festival in Brazil, and at UMass Dartmouth’s Campus Gallery. Their work has received support from The Jerome Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts via Creative Capital, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA).
The NYFA was founded in 1971 to empower artists at critical stages in their creative lives. Each year it awards $650,000 in cash grants to individual artists in all artistic disciplines. NYFA’s fiscal sponsorship program is one of the oldest and most reputable in the country and helps artists and organizations raise and manage an average of $4 million annually. Its Learning programs provide thousands of artists with professional development training and support. NYFA.org received more than 1.2 million visitors last year and has information about more than 12,000 opportunities and resources available to artists in all disciplines.
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