Lawndale, a Houston-based nonprofit, has introduced Candice D’Meza, Guadalupe Hernandez, and Amanda Kerdahi as its Artist Studio Program (ASP) members for the 2025-26 season.
In response to a press launch, the three artists, every based mostly or schooled in Houston, will obtain “dynamic assist to develop their inventive observe” and a public platform for brand new work, to be accompanied by commissioned scholarly writing. Participation within the nine-month program, operating September 1, 2025, by Might 31, 2026, features a $750 month-to-month stipend and $2,000 in direct assist for venture improvement and supplies, with 24-hour entry to a personal studio.
Ms. D’Meza works throughout theater, efficiency, movie, ritual, social observe, and artistic writing to have interaction themes of grief, liberation, and intergenerational reminiscence. Her work explores Black futurism, ancestral applied sciences, and speculative world-building. She is a four-time Houston Press Theater Award winner together with a 2018 win for Greatest Utility Participant, and 2024 Cal Arts Herb Alpert Award in Theatre nominee.
She has been commissioned by Houston’s Catastrophic Theatre for Miss LaRaj’s Home of Dystopian Futures (2025) and A Maroon’s Information to Time and House (2023). Ms. D’Meza’s tasks have been commissioned, offered, and exhibited at establishments together with Latinx Playwrights Circle, DiverseWorks, the Blaffer Artwork Museum, and the Modern Arts Museum Houston.
Guadalupe Hernandez. Photograph: Jakayla Monay, courtesy of Weingarten Artwork Group and Houston Endowment
Mr. Hernandez employs the Mexican people artwork custom of papel picado to discover themes of household, labor, and cultural practices, mixing time-honored methods with up to date imagery and narratives. He acquired the 2024 Houston Endowment Jones Artist Award and a Los Angeles-based 2023 Nest Heritage Craft Prize for his dedication to sustaining and evolving the artwork of papel picado.
He was chosen as certainly one of six artist pairs for the 2022 US Latinx Artwork Discussion board Mentorship Program, and has participated in artist residencies with the Artwork College students League of Denver, Asia Society Texas in Houston, the Houston Middle for Modern Craft, and Undertaking Row Homes. His work has been exhibited at establishments together with the Blaffer, the Chicano Park Museum in San Diego, the Modern Arts Museum Houston, and the McNay Artwork Museum in San Antonio.
Amanda Kerdahi. Photograph courtesy of the artist
Ms. Kerdahi works with sound, video, set up, and efficiency to look at object-based visible tradition by a queer Egyptian-American lens. She acquired a BFA in Digital Media, a BS in Psychology from the College of Houston in 2005, and an MFA from the College of Plymouth, UK in 2013. Ms. Kerdahi and has exhibited at Uncooked Materials in Dakar, Senegal; the Modern Picture Collective in Cairo, Egypt; and the Queer Lisboa Movie Competition in Lisbon, Portugal.
Working with Eto Otitigbe of eo Studio, Ms. Kerdahi acquired a 2023 Artistic Capital award for Tankugbe Incubation Lab. In 2018, she co-curated Topophilia, a video artwork exhibition with 16 worldwide artists in an deserted farmhouse in Nees, Denmark, and in 2014 acquired a grant from The Arab Fund for Arts and Tradition for Filtered Conversations at Round Table. In 2012, she co-founded Benefsigy Studio in downtown Cairo and arranged Pop Up on the Nile, a collection of queer, women-centered dance events on feluccas (widespread motorboats on the Nile), serving as resident DJ Purplpitch.
The artists had been chosen from amongst 141 candidates by a panel that included Lawndale ASP spherical 16 participant Alexis Pye, scholar and educator Dr. Rachel Afi Quinn, Lawndale Advisory Board member and previous exhibiting artist Angelica Raquel, Lawndale Operations and Exhibitions Supervisor Jeremy Johnson, and Govt Director Anna Walker.
Since 2007, the ASP initiative has supplied assist to greater than 57 Houston and Gulf Coast area artists. For extra on the Lawndale studio artists and upcoming packages, examine the group’s website.
