The Great Rivers Biennial Art Award (GRB)—a collaborative initiative between CAM and the Gateway Foundation—recognizes and fosters artistic talent in the greater St. Louis metropolitan area. The artists selected receive $20,000 in unrestricted funding and are featured in the Great Rivers Biennial exhibition every two years at CAM. Since 2003, the GRB has recognized the standout creative voices of 33 local artists in our region.
For the 2024 Biennial, artists Saj Issa, Basil Kincaid, and Ronald Young have proposed exhibitions that involve ceramics, paintings, video, textiles, and sculptural assemblage. The three award winners were unanimously chosen in summer 2023 by a distinguished panel of independent jurors: Rita Gonzalez, Terri and Michael Smooke Curator and Department Head of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Jamillah James, Manilow Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; and Caroline Kent, a Chicago-based artist and Assistant Professor of Painting at the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University. The jurors made the selection after visiting the studios of ten semifinalist artists who were chosen from a pool of 96 applicants.
Great Rivers Biennial 2024 is organized for the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis by Dean Daderko, Ferring Foundation Chief Curator and Misa Jeffereis, Associate Curator, with support from Grace Early, Exhibitions Assistant.
Saj Issa is a Palestinian-American artist who draws on her experience living between St. Louis and Ramallah. Her multidisciplinary practice extends across painting, sculpture, ceramics, and video to consider the Palestinian landscape through environmental, historical, and contemporary lenses. Issa’s body of work reflects changing notions of belonging and a sense of home, while honoring Palestine’s culture and flora.
Basil Kincaid’s impressively-scaled patchwork quilts unite vibrant compositions with elaborate embroidery, appliqué and beading. He incorporates fabrics gifted to him by friends and family with textiles sourced in St. Louis and Ghana—including handwoven Ashanti Kente. This exhibition also features Kincaid’s abstract works, which pay homage to undersung quilters of Arkansas and Alabama, and influences such as Paul Klee and Color Field painting.
Ronald Young celebrates the hard-won beauty of uninhabited sites throughout St. Louis. Through his work, Young elevates salvaged materials including weathered domestic hardware, nails, and disintegrating wooden molding into compelling, multilayered sculptures. Young celebrates the resiliency of disenfranchised communities, calling attention to these sites before all memory of their existence is erased.
