Regional artist wins MacArthur grant

Western North Carolina resident Mel Chin, “a category-defying artist whose practice calls attention to complex social and environmental issues,” is a 2019 recipient of a MacArthur grant, according to an announcement issued Wednesday.

The MacArthur Fellowship said Chin, who lives in the Egypt community of Yancey County, is “harnessing the power of art to raise awareness of social concerns through a practice that defies categorization.”

The MacArthur Fellowship is a $625,000, no-strings-attached award to extraordinarily talented and creative individuals as an investment in their potential. 

Although nominees are reviewed for their achievements, the fellowship is not a lifetime achievement award, but rather an investment in a person's originality, insight, and potential, the foundation says. “The purpose of the MacArthur Fellows program is to enable recipients to exercise their own creative instincts for the benefit of human society.”

There are three criteria for selection of MacArthur fellows: exceptional creativity; promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishments; and potential for the fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work.

“In an expansive body of work ranging from collages, sculptural objects, animated films, and video games to large-scale, collaboratively produced public installations, Chin demonstrates a unique ability to engage people from diverse backgrounds and to utilize unexpected materials and places,” the foundation noted.

“Chin was an early pioneer of the practice that now falls under the rubric of socially engaged art, and he has undertaken several community-based projects that address environmental health.”

Chin is a graduate from the Peabody College of Vanderbilt University. He has served as a visiting professor or fellow at a number of institutions, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology CoLab, George Washington University, the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Michigan, and the University of Georgia. Chin’s work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at such venues as the Queens Museum, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Menil Collection in Houston, and the New Orleans Museum of Art, and he has created installations and public commissions in New York City, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and San Jose, California, and Charlotte, North Carolina, among other national and international sites.