Member Spotlight on Sacatar Foundation

During the month of January, GIA's photo banner features grantees of GIA member the Sacatar Foundation. Founded in 2000, Sacatar created the first international artist residency program in South America. Under the auspices of Sacatar's sister organization, the Brazilian nonprofit Instituto Sacatar, 250 artists from over fifty countries have enjoyed airfare, studio, room, and board for eight-week residencies at Sacatar's beachside estate in Itaparica, Bahia, Brazil. The unique culture of Bahia draws deeply from African roots, and the foundation helps artists connect locally in ways appropriate to the artists’ interests and goals.

Below, in their own words, Sacatar staff discuss the role of artists as cultural ambassadors:

We want to challenge GIA members. American cultural philanthropy typically stops at the borders. Few U.S. institutions support cultural programs internationally. We want to change that. So, while we are a tiny foundation that provides generous grants to just twenty-five artists per year, we are eager to engage our American and international counterparts to acknowledge the importance of transnational experiences. You can’t download this kind of experience off the internet! 

Since our founding, residency programs have popped up across South America and Africa, in places that never had such programs before. The world’s wordsmiths and image-makers now immerse themselves in cultural settings and collaborate with their international peers in ways that cannot be replicated at home, through many programs that did not exist ten years ago. We urge GIA and its members to acknowledge the limits of Americentric philanthropy and to grasp the importance of international outreach. American artists who engage profoundly with different cultures return home to humbly share their deepened awareness of our place in the community of nations and to point the way towards the world we want to live in.

If curious, we invite you to head south and pay us visit: www.sacatar.org / info-usa@sacatar.org.

Photograph: Performance by Pat Oleszco, 2008. Photo: Ivania Kunzler.