2021 FALL GrAntees

Visual Grantee - Jennifer Paige Cohen

The Café Royal Cultural Foundation NYC has awarded a 2021 Fall Visual Grant to Jennifer Paige Cohen for her new Untitled Project.

Jennifer is a sculptor based in Brooklyn, NY. With a history as a dancer her work has long been connected to ideas surrounding the body. In the recent work she has returned to overt figuration for the first time in years, with sculptures made from remnants of worn clothing, plaster and watercolor. The clothing is the artist’s own, collected from thrift stores or given to her by friends and family. The fabric and plaster are shaped into rough yet classically figurative forms - suggesting the passing of different scales of time.

Visual Grantee - Catalina Schliebener

The Café Royal Cultural Foundation NYC has awarded a 2021 Fall Visual Grant to Catalina Schliebener for her series, “Satanic Panic”.

Catalina Schliebener (she/they) is a Sudamerican, Chilean-born visual artist and educator currently based in Brooklyn NY who works primarily with collage, installation, and murals. The subject matter of their work focuses on everyday images and objects related to childhood. Children’s books, pedagogical objects, costumes, sports and games are frequent sources of material in their work.

Literature Grantee - Sabrina Imbler

The Café Royal Cultural Foundation NYC has awarded a 2021 Fall Literature Grant to Sabrina Imbler, a science writer and essayist, for their upcoming book, “How Far the Light Reaches”. Their new project is an essay collection about sea creatures that have helped the author understand their own identities and desires.

Sabrina is currently working as a reporting fellow on the science and health desk of The New York Times.

Literature Grantee - Sarah Wang

The Café Royal Cultural Foundation NYC has awarded a 2021 Fall Literature Grant to Sarah Wang for “The Artificial Organ”, a novel about immigration, plastic surgery, Los Angeles, hair transplants, surveillance, memory, gendered violence, and displacement.

Sarah has written for the London Review of Books, Harper’s Bazaar, The Believer, The Nation, American Short Fiction, BOMB, The New Republic, n+1, and The Los Angeles Review of Books, among other publications. She is a 2021-2022 PEN America Writing for Justice Fellow, a Tin House Scholar, the winner of a Nelson Algren prize for fiction, the recipient of a City Artist Corps Grant, and a former fellow at the Center for Fiction, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop Witness Program, and Kundiman’s Mentorship Program.

Performance Grantee - Faye Driscoll

The Café Royal Cultural Foundation NYC has awarded a 2021 Fall Performance Grant to creator / director Faye Driscoll (creator / director) for her upcoming and untitled new work which draws upon two prolific choreographies: the acts of battle and sex. Touch—the need for it, our fear of it, the formality of entanglements, the powerful sensations that seem to come through us and take us over—are inquiries for this work.

Faye is a Doris Duke Award-winning performance maker who has been hailed as a “startlingly original talent” by The New York Times and “a postmillenium postmodern wild woman” by The Village Voice. 

She is currently the Randjelovic/Stryker Resident Commissioned Artist at New York Live Arts, and is the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship and a Bessie award, among many others. Her credits include collaborations for the Broadway production of Young Jean Lee’s Straight White Men, and Josephine Decker’s award-winning feature film Madeline’s Madeline.

Performance Grantee - David Thomson

The Café Royal Cultural Foundation NYC has awarded a 2021 Fall Performance Grant to David Thomson for his project VESSEL, a durational performance installation that subverts the deeply habitual act of visual interpretation to allow space for an alternative presence in which the body is the primal source of transformation.

David is an interdisciplinary collaborative artist whose history has encompassed the fields of music, dance, theater and performance with a wide range of artists including Bebe Miller, Jane Comfort, Trisha Brown, Grisha Coleman|Hot Mouth, Sekou Sundiata, Ralph Lemon, Meg Stuart, Deborah Hay, Alain Buffard, Maria Hassabi, Yanira Castro, Marina Abramović, Kaneza Schaal, David Bowie, Lee Mingwei/Bill T Jones, Yvonne Rainer, Okwui Okpokwasili and Carl Hancock Rux among many others.

Music Grantee - Catherine Brookman

The Café Royal Cultural Foundation NYC has awarded a 2021 Fall Music Grant to Catherine Brookman. Her art pop project is called Sullivann, and she is currently working on her first solo effort, a double album called “If a song fades out, it’s playing forever somewhere” to be released in 2022.

Her new music deals with the experience of time passing, collapsing, unfinished business, heartbreak, loneliness, depression. I’m making a case for admitting how much we need each other, for unapologetic vulnerability.

Music Grantee - Ludovica Burtone

The Café Royal Cultural Foundation NYC has awarded a 2021 Fall Music Grant to Ludovica Burtone to help complete her album, “Migration Tales”. This project is centered around stories of migration and it intends to raise awareness of the struggles and resilience that immigrant women face, with the direct aim to create empathy and be an inspiration for all. 

Italian violinist, improviser, composer, and educator Ludovica Burtone has performed worldwide as both a soloist and chamber musician. Based in New York City, she finds herself in a multitude of musical settings. From premiering new works for chamber ensembles to collaborating with theaters, to performing her own composition, playing in a jazz quartet or big band, Ludovica’s ability to adapt to various creative musical scenery has led her to an eclectic and successful career.