Light Work 316 Waverly Ave. Syracuse, NY 13244 315.443.1300 Stephanie Mercedes, Castigos, http://www.lightwork.org 2017, Mary Helena Clark, 2017, Joe Librandi-Cowan, The Auburn System Line-up, 2015 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE August 10, 2017

2017 Light Work Grants: Mary Helena Clark, Joe Librandi-Cowen, Stephanie Mercedes

August 28 – October 19, 2017 Light Work Hallway Gallery Reception: Wednesday, September 13, 5-6 p.m.

(Syracuse, NY August 10, 2017) Light Work is pleased to announce an exhibition of works by recipients of the 43rd annual Light Work Grants in Photography. The 2017 recipients are Mary Helena Clark, Joe Librandi-Cowan, and Stephanie Mercedes. The exhibition will be on view in the Hallway Gallery at Light Work from August 28 - October 19, 2017, with an opening reception Wednesday, September 13, from 5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.

The Light Work Grants in Photography program is a part of Light Work’s ongoing effort to provide support and encouragement to artists working in photography. Established in 1975, it is one of the longest-running photography fellowship programs in the country. Each recipient receives a $3,000 award, participates in the opening fall season exhibition, and appears in Contact Sheet: The Light Work Annual.

This year’s judges were Jacqueline Bates (Photography Director, California Sunday Magazine), Kottie Gaydos (Curator and Director of Operations, Detroit Center for Contemporary Photography), and Charles Guice (Director, Charles Guice Contemporary, and Co-founder, Converging Perspectives).

Mary Helena Clark is an artist and educator based in Hamilton, New York. She has screened her films at the 2017 Whitney Biennial (), the Wexner Center for the Arts (Columbus, OH), Grazer Kunstverein (Graz, Austria), Anthology Film Archives (New York City), Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago, IL), National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), the Swedish Film Institute (Stockholm, Sweden), and in numerous festivals including the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the New York Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival, BFI London Film Festival, the Hong Kong International Film Festival, and BAMcinématek. She has curated film programs at Altman Siegel (San Francisco, CA), The Nightingale (Chicago, IL), and Bridget Donahue (New York, NY). Critiques of her work have appeared in Reverse Shot, Cinema Scope, Artforum, The Brooklyn Rail, and Filmmaker Magazine.

“My work is motivated by the transportive qualities of cinema, employing the same fluidity and physical lawlessness that is at the heart of lyrical poetics—how rhythms can move a viewer through space while causal relationships splinter.”

— Mary Helena Clark

Joe Librandi-Cowan is a recent graduate of the College of Visual and Performing Arts at , where he studied fine art photography and was the recent recipient of an Imagining America Engagement Fellowship. His artistic practice is heavily community-based, dealing with the deep and complex issues of the prison industrial complex, its role in society, and its impact on his hometown’s community. Joe is a native of Auburn, NY—a community sustained by a maximum- security prison situated in the middle of the city. He works closely with community members and local educational institutions to create and show images that function inside the community by creating positive dialog around these difficult topics, while simultaneously allowing these images to function outside of the community by asking bigger questions about mass incarceration in American society. Librandi-Cowan has received a Community Arts Grant and has had solo shows of his project The Auburn System at The Cayuga Museum of History and Art in Auburn, NY, and The Gallery at SUNY Onondaga in Syracuse, NY. He has also shown widely online, including a feature on Lensculture and an interview with Pete Brook of the Prison Photography Project.

“My work brings these histories into discussion within the context of modern day mass incarceration to document and explore how a community so deeply ingrained within the prison industry and penal history coexists with its prison. The work also exists to foster a discussion that asks difficult questions regarding prisons, incarceration, and policing within American society.”

— Joe Librandi-Cowan

Stephanie Mercedes an Argentinian-American artist who studied Fine Art and Critical Studies at Smith College and the European Graduate School and was a 2014 recipient of the Norfolk Fellowship from Yale’s School of Art. Mercedes is interested in manipulating traditional forms of photography and investigating the role of photographic copyright in historical national memory. Her recent solo show, Luz del Día: Copyrighting the Light of Day, was on view at the Flower City Art Center and the Common Ground Gallery in Washington, DC, and at Antenna Gallery, New Orleans, LA. She has also exhibited at MORE Gallery in Italy and Puffin Cultural Foundation in 2017. Mercedes has performed and exhibited across the United States, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Switzerland, and Italy. She currently teaches a workshop titled, The Politics of Hope, Using Art as a Political Tool, Archives of the Future, and Law as Form. Mercedes won the 5 College Film Festival in 2015 and has had residencies at Bronx Museum of Art, Flower City Art Center, Kimmel Neilson Art Center, Lugar a Dudas, Largo das Artes, LPEP, and SOMA Summer. She lives in Hamilton, NY.

“Even for those who have no connection to Argentina or the history of human rights violations in Latin America. My work is about attempting to restore the missing fragments of historical memory. Something, that I believe is a universal human desire.”

— Stephanie Mercedes

Light Work is pleased to welcome our new group of grantees to our vast alumni network, which includes artists such as Robert Knight, Lida Suchy, Marion Wilson, Allison Beondé, Thilde Jensen, and Costa Sakellariou.

For more information regarding this year’s grant recipients or to view their work, please visit Light Work Grants at lightwork.org.

*We welcome requests for pre-reception gallery viewings and interviews with Light Work Fall artists.

Gallery hours for this exhibition are Monday―Thursday 10:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., Friday 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., Saturday―Sunday 1:00 to 9:00 p.m. Closed on all major holidays. All exhibitions, lectures, talks, and receptions are free and open to the public.

Light Work is a nonprofit, artist-run organization dedicated to the support of artists working in photography and electronic media. Light Work thanks Syracuse University, Robert B. Menschel and Vital Projects, JGS (Joy of Giving Something, Inc.), the New York State Council on the Arts, the Andy Warhol Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, CNY Arts, the Central New York Community Foundation, and the subscribers to Contact Sheet for their dedicated and ongoing support of our programs. Light Work is a member of CMAC, the Coalition of Museum and Art Centers at Syracuse University.

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Find more information at www.lightwork.org OR Contact Cjala Surratt at Light Work, 315-443-9933, or [email protected]