On Tuesday, Oct. 21, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (FCA) announced the recipients of its 2025 Creative Research Grants, awarding $10,000 each to 35 artists advancing experimental practices across disciplines. Among this year’s winners are four CalArts alums: Evelyn Hang Yin (Art MFA 20), Carmen Amengual (Art MFA 16), Kyle Bellucci Johanson (Art MFA 16), and Matthew Lax (Film/Video–IM MFA 16).
Launched in 2024, the Creative Research Grants program supports the early, exploratory stages of artistic work, which are often vital to the creative process but are rarely funded. This year’s grantees represent a wide spectrum of disciplines, including dance, music, performance, poetry, and visual art. Their proposed projects span archival research, interdisciplinary collaboration, material experimentation, and travel across the U.S. and 15 other countries and territories.
A multidisciplinary artist, Yin will investigate Chinese diasporic histories, transpacific migration, and collective archives through the lens of archaeology and preservation. Collaborating with historical archaeologists in the U.S. and Guangdong, China, she plans to observe archaeological digs, study preservation practices in early Chinese migrants’ home villages, and research remittance-built infrastructures.
Amengual will expand her long-term moving-image project on the 1973 and 1974 Third World Filmmakers Meetings. Her research will take her to European archives to locate and assess the condition of endangered films and to train in analog film processing and preservation techniques.
Johanson’s interdisciplinary practice examines the aesthetics of political power. Through research in Italian archives, a technical workshop in digital Jacquard weaving, and extended studio experimentation, Johanson will explore how technologies and aesthetics have historically functioned as tools of domination.
Lax, an artist, filmmaker, and writer, will begin work on Horse Girls, an experimental film installation exploring human-animal interdependence through his mother’s and others’ relationships with horses. Incorporating family archives, interviews, VR simulations, and movement studies with retired racehorses, the project reflects on themes of parenthood, disability, control, and labor.
