This year’s grantees include 18th Street Art Center, which hosts exhibitions and live performances including Sage Ni’Ja Whitson’s “A Meditation on Tongues.” (photo by Scott Shaw)

The Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts on March 28 announced the recipients of the first Infinite Expansion Grants, which will support compelling upcoming projects at contemporary arts organizations across Los Angeles County. While in previous years the foundation supported a larger number of grantees with smaller gifts, this year MKFA intentionally chose to focus resources on 10 innovative organizations, awarding larger grants ranging from $32,000 to $45,000. The strategic shift primarily provides increased support for artist projects that push the boundaries of practice in the arts while also allowing a percentage of the grant to be allocated to much-needed operating expenses.

The grant takes its name from Mike Kelley’s “Infinite Expansion” (1983), a large drawing depicting a tiny central landscape from which increasingly larger psychedelic wood-grain patterns radiate. In a nod to the title, the grants emphasize the resounding impact that arts organizations and artists make in communities they build and the world at large. The grants further the foundation’s mission of supporting critical thinking, risk-taking and provocation in the arts through innovative programming and artist projects. This year’s grantees are 18th Street Arts Center, The Brick, CalArts REDCAT, Fulcrum Arts/home LA, Future Roots/Canary Test, Human Resources Los Angeles, JOAN, Los Angeles Nomadic Division, Pieter Performance Space and Self Help Graphics & Art.

“We are excited to support this exceptional group of organizations, whose work continues to challenge paradigms in the arts,” executive director Mary Clare Stevens said. “By offering larger grants, we can better amplify impact and nurture the visionary spirit our foundation strives to uplift.”

This year’s grantees address the reclamation and reinterpretation of marginalized histories and identities, often through performance, sound, installation and immersive experiences. Engaging with the complex legacies of race, queerness, displacement and collective memory, the projects address issues of erasure, visibility and belonging with a strong emphasis on community, empowerment, healing, resistance and the celebration of cultural resilience through diverse artistic practices.

For information, visit mikekelleyfoundation.org.