Recognizing the “magnificent range of disciplines and diversity of our nation’s artists”
Ja:goh Rosy Simas, Seneca, Heron Clan, transdisciplinary and dance artist from Mni Sota Makoce, Minnesota
indiancountrytoday.com | January 26, 2022
Ten of the 63 artists receiving $50,000 unrestricted cash awards from United States Artists are Native American. US Artists announced its 2022 Fellows on Wednesday. The group selected from 10 disciplines are the largest cohort since the organization’s start 16 years ago.
The award “honors their creative accomplishments and supports their ongoing artistic and professional development,” US Artists said in a prepared statement.
“We are thrilled to award fellowships to sixty-three artists – the largest cohort in USA’s history – this year,” said US Artists Board Chair Ed Henry. “Our work continues to illuminate the importance of elevating individual artists and cultural practitioners in communities across the country.These sixty three fellows are representative of the magnificent range of disciplines and diversity of our nation’s artists…The breadth and depth of talent and the commitment of artists to their communities is remarkable,” he said.
US Artists Program Director Lynnette Miranda said, “The 2022 USA Fellows were selected for their remarkable artistic vision, their commitment to community – both in their specific communities and their discipline at large – and the potential to influence future generations.”
United States Artists has awarded more than $36 million to artists since its start in 2006.
The 2022 cohort includes textile artist Melissa Cody, Dine’; transdisciplinary and dance artist Rosy Simas, Seneca; musician Laura Ortman, White Mountain Apache; Indigenous musician Qacung, Yup’ik; vocalist, songwriter, composer, and educator Martha Redbone, Cherokee/Choctaw; actor, playwright, artistic director and advocate DeLanna Studi, Cherokee; raised beadwork artist Karen Ann Hoffman, Haudenosaunee; artist and educator Marty Two Bulls Jr., Oglala Lakota; painter Andrea Carlson, Ojibwe; and culture bearer, artist, designer, and educator Peter Williams, Yup’ik;
Below is some information about Rosy and her work:
DANCE
Rosy Simas, Seneca, Heron Clan, transdisciplinary and dance artist from Mni Sota Makoce, Minnesota
“Before the dual pandemics, I and the artists I work with were already struggling with racism, bias, and phobias, which we’re making our working and living environments ungrounding and unsafe. Since the onset of the pandemics, I have been driven to make space, hold space and offer ideas on how we can rest in movement and find refuge for that rest. This has been critical in order to survive the onslaught of bigotry and violence so we can be creative. What I have had to do this last year is to set aside my ambition to produce work in the ways I had in the past. I had to really leave the commodity culture that producing work for stage rooted in. I had to set aside the demands I made on myself and those I work with and focus on what we needed as individuals. So we could come together. We spend our time in a practice of grieving, condoling and resting. We share this practice and I have let go of trying to meet the expectations of those who think I should be doing otherwise,” Simas told United States Artists.
Simas, an enrolled citizen of the Seneca Nation, Heron clan, is a transdisciplinary and dance artist who creates work for stage and installation. Simas’ work weaves themes of personal and collective identity with family, sovereignty, equality, and healing. Simas creates dance work with a team of Native artists and artists of color, driven by movement-vocabularies developed through deep listening.
Her dance works include “Weave,” “Skin(s)” and “We Wait in the Darkness,” which have toured throughout Turtle Island. Simas’ installations have been exhibited at the Seneca-Iroquois National Museum, All My Relations Arts, SOO visuals Center, and the Weisman Art Museum.
She has received numerous fellowships and honors for dance and choreography.
Simas is the artistic director of Rosy Simas Danse and Three Thirty One Space, a creative studio for Native and BIPOC artists in Minneapolis.
