Dare to be Different: A Showcase of
Collaborative Projects by FAWC Fellows
and Provincetown IB School Students
Friday, April 18, 2025
9-11 AM
We invite you to a showcase of projects created through a collaboration of Fellows and local Provincetown IB School Elementary and Middle school students
Each year, as part of our CAPE Program, the Fellows at Fine Arts Work Center collaborate with a classroom teacher at the local Provincetown IB School on hands-on projects with their students. Join us for this showcase that will feature an exhibition of the students’ work and more.
Participating Fellows include; Zeinab Shahidi Marnani who collaborated with Kindergarten students, Jose De Sancristobal with 4th grade, Elena Kovylyaeva with 6th grade, and Carlos Zerpa who collaborated with 7th graders.
Participating Fellows:
Zeinab Shahidi Marnani is an interdisciplinary visual artist, and filmmaker based in Tehran and New York. Her work explores themes such as time, vision including light and darkness, as well as language. Shahidi holds an MFA in Sculpture from Yale School of Art and a Bachelor of Visual Communication from Tehran University. She has been an artist-in-residence at The Watermill Center, The International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York and Akrai residency in Italy. She received the Inga Maren Otto Fellowship, Art Jameel and Edge of Arabia’s Fellowship, Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development, and the Alice Kimball English Traveling Fellowship Award. Her work has been exhibited internationally at many venues, including Universität der Künste (UDK) in Berlin, the Museum of Moscow, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Copenhagen; ALLGOLD at the MoMA PS1 Print Shop in New York; Azad Art Gallery and The Museum of Contemporary Art in Tehran,
José De Sancristóbal is an artist and wannabe translator. For the past three years, he’s used photography, video, film, and writing to consider different functions lens-based images perform within the configuration of the nation-state. His recent films and videos draw equally upon formal rigor and fantasy, producing self-differing subjects and objects. Informed by the camera’s history as a tool to regulate citizens and their movement, his work disorganizes established identification techniques by viewing them through the lens of unmeasurable practices: fiction, role-play, memory, translation, and magical realism are used to poke holes in those devices purporting to administer the self—such as passport photographs, biographical information, legal status, or national borders.
- Elena Kovylyaeva is a visual artist based in Leipzig, Germany, whose work examines the intersection of materiality and memory. Using found materials, she creates detailed tactile surfaces that engage the body, incorporating elements of painting, textile art, and sculpture. Born in Russia and raised in Düsseldorf, Germany from the age of five, Kovylyaeva studied film and literature in Berlin before pursuing painting and graphic arts at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig, where she graduated with a diploma in 2020. She then earned her MFA in painting from the Hoffberger School of Painting at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, supported by Fulbright and DAAD scholarships, from 2021 to 2023. In 2022, she participated in the Fulbright Artist Residency at the Silvermine Arts Center in Connecticut. Kovylyaeva’s work has been exhibited in both Germany and the USA, including at the Grimaldis Gallery and the Peale Museum in Baltimore.
Carlos Arturo Zerpa is an interdisciplinary artist, creative producer, educator, and social entrepreneur based in Caracas, Venezuela. Rooted in cooperation and solidarity, his work branches into scriptwriting, design, animation, and street art, and it’s moved by the power of storytelling and innovation as engaging forces for change, especially in addressing social issues of South America and the Caribbean. Since 2010, Carlos has led ECL-MECHA, an award-winning creative cooperative focused on empowering underrepresented characters by crafting transgressive, insightful, and irreverent animated stories. In 2022, he co-founded RIMA, a digital platform that connects Global South artists with international mobility and financing opportunities. From 2012-2016, Carlos co-founded and taught in ENGRAPO, a public experimental visual communication school that hosted two cohorts of disenfranchised youth. He’s received fellowships from Locarno Open Doors, Berlinale Talents, the Global Cultural Relationships Platform, and has been an artist in residence at Santa Fe Art Institute, the Bemis Center, the Saari Residency, Corsicana Artist and Writer Residency, Kulturhaus Villa Sträuli, La Maison des Auteurs, and Instituto Sacatar, amongst others.
The Fine Arts Work Center is committed to making its events and services inclusive and accessible for everyone. If you need any accommodations to fully participate, please contact our Accessibility Coordinator, Susan Blood, at 508-487-9960, extension 106.
Both the Stanley Kunitz Common Room and the Hudson D. Walker Gallery meet ADA accessibility standards. If you need help accessing these spaces, please call us at 508-487-9960 ext. 101 before your visit.
This program is supported in part by the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod, Mass Cultural Council, Mass Development, and Provincetown Tourism Fund, and Provincetown Cultural Council, a local agency which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency.
