Persimmon Grantees 2021

Jun 2021 | Granted $1K

We created the Persimmon Grant offering $500 individually to two upcoming QTAPI Bay Area-based artists. Just as enjoying persimmons requires care and patience to really enjoy the sweet, ripe fruit, we're investing in these artists with the goal of our QTAPI communities reaping the rewards.

Meet Our Persimmon Grantees

 Cairo Mo

Cairo Mo (he/they) is a painter based in Berkeley, CA. As a trans masculine person, Cairo practices art-making as healing, ritual, and celebration. He is working on an ongoing archival project to document the intimate and mundane moments of local queer youth subculture. He also creates linocut prints based on the forgotten queer stories of Chinese folklore as a way to honour his queer ancestors. Their work has been published in art journals and magazines, and exhibited locally as well as internationally in France. Follow @cairopaints

Menaja Ganesh

Menaja Ganesh (they/them) is a Tamil artist from Bengal, currently based in San Francisco. Their work lies in the intersections between language and presentation, queerness and femininity, familiarity and loss. It is in honour of their ancestors, and all that came before them. Their artistic process fully engages the body and space, through the curatorial practices of bookmaking, printmaking, performance, and installation. They recently graduated from California College of the Arts, and their work has been exhibited in Oakland, San Francisco, and Kolkata. Follow @menaja.art