Felipe Castelblanco Olaya
As a recipient of the Kala Fellowship Award, Felipe will initiate a new body of work at the Kala Institute by experimenting with printmaking processes that reflect environmental conditions and air quality. These experiments will lead to the creation of an artist’s book, investigating air and energy as a material embodiment of the public sphere.
Felipe Castelblanco is a multidisciplinary artist, working at the intersection of socially engaged and new media art. Through urban interventions, video, performance, sculpture and networked installations, his work creates participatory experiences of publicness and enables coexistent encounters between unlikely audiences and across vast distances. Felipe holds and MFA from Carnegie Mellon University and in 2012 attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2012. His work has been shown internationally, including the San Diego Museum of Art; FAD festival in Belo Horizonte, Brazil; FIVAC festival in Camaguey Cuba; the Miller Gallery in Pittsburgh; PRACTICE Gallery in Philadelphia; the Valenzuela Klenner Gallery in Bogotá Colombia, and in storefronts and street corners throughout United States. Felipe has been the recipient of the 2013 John Fergus Post MFA Fellowship at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio; the 2014 Starr Fellowship at the Royal Academy in London, UK; and most recently commissioned by the U.S Department of Education and Zero1 to develop a participatory project in the Philippines during the Spring of 2015, through the American Arts Incubator exchange program.