PRINCETON, N.J.: Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts has named five Mary Mackall Gwinn Hodder Fellows for the 2023-24 academic year. The artists and humanists include cartoonist and designer Kayla E., choreographer Moriah Evans, theatre artist Modesto Flako Jimenez, composer Joseph C. Phillips, Jr., and conceptual artists Charisse Pearlina Weston.
“Our Hodder fellows area rigorously visionary group, probing the limits and potentials of their chosen media and exploring our most urgent issues in their work,” Lewis Center chair Judith Hamera said in a statement. “Mrs. Hodder understood that making complex and compelling art requires time and support. We are ever grateful for her gift and are very excited to welcome these five emerging artists to Princeton.”
Evans positions choreography as a speculative, social process and draws on somatic choreographic practices to question hierarchies among flesh, body, self, and subject. She creates site-specific performances, theatre-based productions, museum-based participatory installations, and more. Her work has been seen at or produced by the Hirshhorn Museum, New York University’s Skirball Center, and the Kitchen, among others. In 2011, Evans founded the Bureau for the Future of Choreography collective, and she previously served as the editor-in-chief of the Movement Research Performance Journal. She has been a dance and process co-curator at the Kitchen since 2016 and will use her fellowship year at the Lewis Center to further her research of epigenetics and jurisprudence and the intersectional feminist interpellation of theatre.
Jimenez is a Dominican-born, Bushwick-raised poet, playwright, actor, educator, and director. His work explores the intersections of identity, language, mediums, cultures, and communities in his personal life and beyond. Jimenez’s recent work includes Taxilandia, a Bushwick community tour from the back of a taxicab that was named a New York Times Critic’s Pick. He is the founder of ¡Oye! Group, a nonprofit that serves as an incubator for artists both native and immigrant to New York. Jimenez will use his fellowship year to continue working on Mercedes, a multi-disciplinary art experience that explores the relationship between matriarchy and ancestors and how one’s identity can impact mental health.
In addition to creating new works, Hodder fellows may engage in lectures, readings, performances, and exhibitions at the Lewis Center, most of which are free and open to the public.
The Lewis Center for the Arts encompasses Princeton University’s academic programs in creative writing, dance, theatre and music theatre, and visual arts. It offers over 100 diverse public events each year, many for free, and is supported by alumni and other donors.
