Writer and oral historian Nyssa Chow, interdisciplinary artist Ani Liu, and choreographer Netta Yerushalmy have been named Princeton University Arts Fellows for 2019-21 and will begin two years of teaching and community collaboration in September.
The Arts Fellows program of the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton provides support for early-career artists who have demonstrated both extraordinary promise and a record of achievement in their fields with the opportunity to further their work while teaching within a liberal arts context. Funded in part by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the David E. Kelley ’79 Society of Fellows Fund, and the Maurice R. Greenberg Scholarship Fund, Fellows are selected for a two-year residency to teach a course each semester or, in lieu of a course, to undertake an artistic assignment that deeply engages undergraduate students, such as directing a play, conducting a music ensemble, or choreographing a dance piece. Fellows are expected to be active members of the University’s intellectual and artistic community while in residence; in return, they are provided the resources and spaces necessary to their work.
Chow, Liu, and Yerushalmy were selected from a large, diverse, and multi-talented pool of over 600 applicants in dance, music, creative writing, theater, and the visual arts.
“We had our strongest pool of applicants ever this year, across all disciplines,” notes Stacy Wolf, Director of Fellowships, Professor of Theater, and Director of the Program in Music Theater. “Nyssa, Ani, and Netta will be phenomenal additions to our community as artists and as teachers, and we’re thrilled to support their work for the next two years.”
Writer and oral historian Nyssa Chow. Photo courtesy of Nyssa Chow.
Nyssa Chow works at the intersection of ethical, engaged listening and the translation of experience. In her practice as an oral historian, she begins with the idea that oral history is “spontaneous literature.” She then decides which form best evokes — and makes visceral — the lived experience of history. Chow was the 2018 recipient of the PEN/Jean Stein Grant for Literary Oral History for the book project, Still. Life. The immersive literary oral history project The Story of Her Skin won the Columbia University Jeffrey H. Brodsky Oral History Award. She is a recipient of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association Grant, the Women in Film and Television Fellowship, the Toms Fellowship, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Foundation Award, the Zaki Gordon Award for Excellence in Screenwriting, as well as a Sloan Foundation grant. Chow serves as Writer-in-Residence at Fordham University and as a professor in the Oral History Masters program at Columbia University. She has been invited to speak about her work and approach to oral history at institutions such as George Washington University, New York University, Skidmore College, and others. Born and raised in Trinidad, she is a graduate of the Columbia University M.F.A. Film program and the Columbia University Oral History Masters program.
In fall 2019 she will teach a new course exploring the practices of oral history.
Interdisciplinary artist Ani Liu. Photo courtesy of Ani Liu.
Ani Liu works at the intersection of art and science, examining the reciprocal relationships between science and technology and their influence on culture and identity. In the search to link scientific innovation with emotional tangibility, her work deploys techniques including robotics, prosthetics, perfumes, augmented reality, and synthetic biology. She has been featured on National Geographic, Vice, Mashable, Gizmodo, TED, FOX, and Wired. She has exhibited at Ars Electronica, Queens Museum Biennial, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Asian Art Museum, M.I.T. Museum, Mana Contemporary, and the Shenzhen Design Society. She is the winner of the Biological Art and Design Award (2017) and the S&R Washington Prize (2018). She has taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and is on critique panels at Harvard, Dartmouth, M.I.T., University of Pennsylvania, New York University, University of North Carolina Charlotte, Pratt Institute, and Parsons School of Design. At M.I.T., she is on the Committee of Art Scholars. Liu has a B.A. from Dartmouth College, a Masters of Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and a Master of Science from M.I.T. Media Lab. Her studio is based in New York City.
Choreographer Netta Yerushalmy. Photo ©Branda – Courtesy of NYU Photo Bureau.
New York City-based choreographer Netta Yerushalmy is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Jerome Robbins Bogliasco Fellowship, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award, commissions from Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Extended Life program, a Six Points Fellowship, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. Currently, she is a Merce Cunningham Research Fellow at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, and a Toulmin Fellow at the Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University. Yerushalmy’s work has been presented by venues such as the Joyce Theater, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Danspace Project, American Dance Festival, HAU Hebbel um Ufer, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Suzanne Dellal Center for Dance, and New York Live Arts. She works across genres and disciplines: she contributed to artist Josiah McElheny’s “Prismatic Park,” choreographed a Red Hot Chili Peppers music video, worked with cellist Maya Beiser and composer Julia Wolfe on “Spinning,” and collaborated on evenings of theory and performance at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry (ICI Berlin). As guest artist and guest faculty, Yerushalmy has created works for repertory companies and universities nationwide. As a performer she has danced with Doug Varone and Dancers, Pam Tanowitz Dance, Joanna Kotze, the Metropolitan Opera Ballet, and others. Originally from Israel, she received her B.F.A. in Dance from Tisch School of the Arts.
In the fall she will work with students to create a new piece for the Program in Dance’s annual Princeton Dance Festival.
“I look forward to all that Nyssa, Ani and Netta will bring to the University,” notes Michael Cadden, Chair of the Lewis Center. “They are women with a wide range of intellectual and artistic interests which have led them to produce work in a wide range of forms. We’re delighted to join them on their creative journeys and to welcome them on our journey as a liberal arts university devoted to providing a home for arts practitioners — from first-year students to Nobel Prize winners.”
The next round of Fellowship applications will begin in July with a mid-September deadline. Guidelines will be posted on the Lewis Center website at arts.princeton.edu. For questions about the Fellowship program, write to lca-fellowships@princeton.edu.
