You are here: Home Communications Pressroom News President Raab and the Hunter College Department of Art Announce Winner of Second C12 Emerging Artist Fellowship

President Raab and the Hunter College Department of Art Announce Winner of Second C12 Emerging Artist Fellowship

The second C12 Emerging Artist Fellowship has been awarded to Hunter College's MFA in Studio Art graduate Alexandra Nuňez. The fellowship includes a $25,000 stipend, and is bestowed each semester on a graduating senior from Hunter's highly competitive MFA in Studio Art program.

Established by Hunter College and C12 Capital Management to foster the burgeoning careers of newly graduated artists, the Emerging Artist Fellowship funds are intended to offset the artist's professional expenses - including studio space, materials, travel and application fees for exhibitions, and creating or maintaining a website - thereby assisting the awardee in making the transition from graduate student to professional artist.

"Hunter is so fortunate that our talented studio art graduates have a unique opportunity to participate in a program that supports young artists as they begin their careers. The C12 Emerging Artists Fellowship allows a young artist to continue to progress creatively without financial worry for a year," said Hunter College President Jennifer J. Raab.

Born in Miami, Alex Nuňez received her BA at Loyola University in New Orleans before coming to New York City to earn her MFA at Hunter College with a concentration in painting. As an artist, Nuňez is interested in distorting and mutating familiar cultural and conceptual images, and in doing so, offers the viewer an opportunity to experience multiple interpretations. Her C12 award-winning piece, Untitled, was a painted canvas mounted on the wall of the Hunter College Times Square Gallery, and across a section of the gallery floor. Nuňez painted images on the canvas that she found personally significant, laid the canvas over a fan, and then secured the canvas to the ground. Untitled became a moving painting, which allowed the gallery space as well as her painting to distort and transform, offering unexpected narratives on the images she created by treating the painting as a moving sculpture. She plans on using her fellowship award for expenses that include studio rental and supplies during her post-graduate year.

C12 Emerging Artist jury members were Thelma Golden, director of the Studio Museum in Harlem; Matthew Higgs, director of White Columns, New York's oldest alternative art space; Marty Eisenberg, a prominent collector of contemporary art; and art critic Barry Schwabsky. At Hunter's Times Square Gallery, the jurors examined the artwork of the MFA graduates and selected Nunez based on her artistic potential. The jury also gave special recognition to two finalists for the C12 Fellowship: Caroline Falby and Phoebe Norris.

Exemplifying a commitment to the arts in New York, the C12 Emerging Artist Fellowship was established through a generous contribution to Hunter College from C12 Capital Management. Launched in 2009 as an independent alternative asset manager with operations in the city, C12 Capital Management has built an art collection based on the ideas and theories that constitute the firm's core principles. International in scope, the collection includes work across a variety of mediums by such artists as Liam Gillick, Ernesto Neto, Matthew Ritchie, Gabriel Orozco, Francesca diMatteo, Cornelia Parker and Tony Feher.

Widely regarded as one of the leading art programs in the country, Hunter's Department of Art serves both our undergraduate and graduate populations, offering a full undergraduate major in Art, a BFA and an MFA in Studio Art, and an MA in Art History. In its 2012 rankings of "America's Best Graduate Schools," U.S. News & World Report ranked Hunter's Master of Fine Arts program 13th in the nation, and within this, the painting and drawing program 7th - a phenomenal achievement for a public institution. Many graduates of the Department of Art's programs are enjoying successful careers as working artists and as curators in galleries and museums throughout the United States.

Document Actions
HUNTER COLLEGE
695 Park Ave
NY, NY 10065
212.772.4000