Last week, United States Artists, a Chicago-based arts funding organization, announced its 2025 USA Fellows, a cohort of artists and collectives representing 10 creative disciplines and 21 states. Philadelphia-based multidisciplinary traditional artist César Viveros, sculptor and public artist Karyn Olivier, choreographer and performer Nichole Canuso, and interdisciplinary artist Rea Tajiri earned this prestigious recognition.
The annual fellowship “recognizes a broad diversity of regions and mediums, awarding artists across the nation for their groundbreaking artistic visions and unique perspectives within their field,” the organization said in its statement. In addition to a $50,000 unrestricted cash award, each fellow receives access to professional services and field resources to deepen the impact of their practice and support their essential roles in society.
We spoke with the Philadelphia artists who received this fellowship to learn more about their work, the challenges they have overcome, and what Philly means to them.
César Viveros
Multidisciplinary traditional artist
How has your work evolved over time?
I had prior experience in Mexico painting murals. I don’t have formal academic training, but I always explored art in my own way and enjoyed it … And luckily for me, I came to Philadelphia and landed in a city that already had a mural program … Until about eight years ago, I was very focused on that type of public art, but I also built altars and did many things that I wouldn’t say I didn’t consider art, but for me, they had more of a folkloric, traditional aspect to them. I did everything as a volunteer; however, I started to realize that this was what connected me the most with the migrant community, the Mexican community, and the Latino community.
What creative and financial challenges have you faced, and how might this recognition help change that?
Now, what I’m going to do is seek guidance. This [Fellowship] comes as a package. It includes financial advisors who can help you — if you still have things to pay off, they guide you on the best method to do so, how to save, how to make the most of your money and how to improve your credit. I don’t own a house, so my goal is to buy one to secure something for my children, for my family, and that will also give me more freedom … To do what I need to do, I need time. So, this grant is essentially buying me time.
What aspects of Philly’s culture, history or communities inspire you the most?
Through my work as a public artist, I have worked with so many neighborhoods and communities, all so different from one another, which has given me the opportunity to connect with them. And I can see the pattern — ordinary people, all of us who are not part of the 1%, on a personal level, no matter our different ideologies … completely different cultures, or social and economic status, when we come together in a shared space, when we create art, we speak the same language … What inspires me about Philadelphia is that it is a city of incredibly diverse and distinct neighborhoods, but in that difference, we find each other, in that difference, we enjoy each other, and in that difference, we grow together.
Is there a specific place in Philly that holds deep meaning for you?
My favorite place in the city of Philadelphia is the entire [Benjamin Franklin] Parkway … I used to take my kids there a lot and would go with my wife as well. I love it because, on one side, you can see City Hall … but then you turn around, and you see this green avenue, and tree-lined streets. You can walk all the way down to the [art] museum and even climb up to the Rocky statue … It’s an avenue full of excitement, because every block has so much to offer. I mean, who else has Rodin statues just right there, out in the open?
Do you have any upcoming projects or exhibits people should know about?
This year, I am honored to be the inaugural artist-in-residence at The Ministry of Awe (MoA), a Philadelphia-based nonprofit dedicated to enriching the city’s cultural landscape by transforming untapped potential into extraordinary art. Through this residency, I will collaborate with various neighborhood organizations to bring greater representation to this dynamic space, creating an immersive experience that bridges contemporary creativity with Mesoamerican traditions. By infusing intricate yet playful elements of Mesoamerican culture, this project aims to captivate a broad audience eager for unique and meaningful artistic experiences.
Karyn Olivier
How has your work evolved over time?
My background was not art … I studied psychology. I never thought about myself as an artist. I was a buyer at Bloomingdales in New York and just needed a night out at the store … So I started taking ceramics classes and that led to me deciding I think I want to pursue ceramics, so I actually left my job and moved to Philadelphia to take enough undergraduate credits … When I was at grad school, I just started thinking about ceramic vessels and how they’re a container. They’re a container, but this room is a container. And I literally made a leap from making vessels to making installations in a room … I feel that sometimes my job is to reveal this opening or this slit where you could see it open to a possibility for something else.
What creative and financial challenges have you faced, and how might this recognition help change that?
I’m a professor at Tyler School of Art and Architecture, but it’s hard. You still have to have your studio rent … And I do sculptures, sometimes I have to have help fabricating them, but I also do public art. And when you do public art, there’s so much legwork … And so my career is getting better and better, getting more recognition, which is incredible … but it’s hard that I’ve been having to turn things down because I literally don’t have enough hours in the day, so this is really going to help me to sustain a part-time studio manager. I mean, literally it’s going to help me to be able to not be under the water.
What aspects of Philly’s culture, history or communities inspire you the most?
I kind of fell in love with this neighborhood [Germantown ], that felt like the most diverse, amazing place. Yes, there’s poverty, but yes, there’s middle class. Yes, there’s depravity, but yes, there’s extreme beauty. There’s so much care, there’s so much history. People are friendly. People can post on the listserv, ‘Could someone pay for my groceries this week?’ And people show up … So living that way informs, becausel I feel very alive here and I feel my neighbors and my community they’re just very present, they’re very Philadelphia.
Is there a specific place in Philly that holds deep meaning for you?
I love Vernon Park, partly because of that piece that I did there. But also … I was studying Daniel Francis Pastorius, who was a Quaker abolitionist who led the first Quaker protest against slavery in 1688; and then literally, three years after doing that project, I moved down to the street that’s called Pastorius Street. And I’m always so excited. I’m living in the site of where this person I have such admiration for was named after.
Do you have any upcoming projects or exhibits people should know about?
A city-wide project in Philadelphia is upcoming this year that will be announced in March. And then I have a solo museum show at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Detroit coming up next year.
Nichole Canuso
Choreographer, performer and teacher
How has your work evolved over time?
When I first started, making work was really about performing and creating something to be performed, and over time it’s become more and more about creating experiences to be shared … I’ve been making work for over 30 years now, so it’s taken a long journey, and I’d say it’s gotten more and more expansive. I take longer to make a project, the web of collaborators is much wider, and the way audiences are involved both in the process and in the performances has gotten more and more complex and intricate … The heart of the work is really connecting, so that in creating a community — with the collaborators, with the performers, and then the audience — becomes a part of that community.
What creative and financial challenges have you faced, and how might this recognition help change that?
Something that has deep value for me and my collaborators is pay equity and we really like to have a long process and give it its attention and having everyone who is part of the process be paid for their time … And sometimes the development goes slowly because we’re making sure to raise the money to pay people … So, whenever there’s like an additional grant like this, it softens things a little bit … And in some ways, it might speed things up, because it won’t take as long to raise the money … This is such a special grant. I will try to balance it between paying the bills that pile up and the projects that are on the table, but also hoping to use it as an opportunity to take more workshops and do more learning that I wouldn’t normally have the chance to do so that I could fortify my work with my collaborators.
What aspects of Philly’s culture, history or communities inspire you the most?
Philly is so lived in. I feel like some cities, it’s like you walk around and it’s a lot of big institutions but it’s empty in the center, and I feel like the neighborhood is so vibrant and people really say what they feel for good or for bad. It’s that energy of openness and I think it finds its way into the artistic community. There’s a lot of conversation across genres and a lot of welcoming and curiosity about the audiences. It’s not a closed circuit of art lovers watching art. It’s really a lot of people wanting to know who lives here and how to engage with them.
Is there a specific place in Philly that holds deep meaning for you?
To be near water feels really special, so I feel grateful to be able to go take walks by the Schuylkill or the Delaware [rivers], and just to be reminded that the water’s moving through here and it’s on its way to the ocean. That there’s this going pathway and it’s part of something bigger.
Do you have any upcoming projects or exhibits people should know about?
The project that’s in development now is called Lunar Retreat and its poetic motor is the relationship between the moon and the Earth, and the way that shows up in the tides. The moon is actually getting further and further away from the Earth, and at a speed that’s faster than the way the entire universe is expanding. So I’m thinking a lot about loss and letting go and change. The projects I make are pretty interactive, so this will be an interactive space for people to engage with each other’s relationship to that theme. And we’ll be working on that for the next year, and the way we work is that we’re often doing workshops and showings as we develop the project because it is so interactive, so there will be several of those coming up over the next year.
Rea Tajiri
How has your work evolved over time?
[In college], I thought I was going to be a painter, but CalArts is a very interdisciplinary school and they really encourage a lot of cross pollination with different mediums … I started doing installation and then I started incorporating film … and then I wanted to do video art … And then I kind of got restless with that form. It was too limiting for the ideas and the content that I wanted to handle, so I expanded it into more like hybrid documentary. And it’s evolved from there to more feature-length projects.
What creative and financial challenges have you faced, and how might this recognition help change that?
I think the biggest stumbling block is always the fundraising. The kinds of films that I make, they’re difficult to categorize, so people sort of say they don’t know what I’m doing or don’t understand it … One thing that I’ve been thinking about is how do I frame the work … I want to say that I’ve been successful at raising money for all my projects, but I think that I’m in a different phase where I’m trying to rethink the kinds of work that I make … I want to cross over into different spaces. So how am I going to use the money? One thing is they do provide us with a little extra money to hire advisors, so I’m going to definitely use it for that and to produce a few scenes for a film that I’m working on.
What aspects of Philly’s culture, history or communities inspire you the most?
Philadelphia is one of those big small cities … There’s a lot of artists that come through here, and performance and theater and dance and film. There are some great venues and also media spaces to support filmmakers and exhibitions … And it’s scalable, so that you could have very intimate engagement … The history is really interesting. It has factored into one of my projects. A few years ago, I did a multi-site installation exploring these different sites that were connected to Japanese Americans who were resettling after World War II, after the concentration camps, and came to Philadelphia … There was a shop. There’s a tombstone … I also found the family that ran the hostel that hosted Japanese Americans when they came out of camp.
Is there a specific place in Philly that holds deep meaning for you?
I really think that the river is a place that’s very important. Bodies of water are really important. So I would say that there’s different parts where I’ve been, I’ve gone kayaking or I’ve walked along or have done rituals, the Schuylkill or the Wissahickon or the Delaware, those are really important.
Do you have any upcoming projects or exhibits people should know about?
I’m going to be presenting something at the Greaves [Filmmaker] Seminar, which is part of the Black Star Film Festival … And you can see my film project “Wisdom Gone Wild” … If you have a PBS membership, you can go up there and watch it.