Herbert Simon Family Foundation: Risky Business

October 10 — December 20, 2026 | Katharine B Sutphin Gallery | CAMi

Zola Lamothe, Kaila Austin, Corey Ewing, Omar Rashan, Carlos Sosa Jr.

Creative Director: Rishard Allen

Visual Arts Curator: Lindsey Lord

As America neared the turn of the century in the late 80s and into the 90s, the

conservative movement orchestrated a conflict over one of the most valuable political

assets: culture. In what became known as the culture wars, artists and arts

organizations—especially those exploring obscure, iconoclastic, and provocative ideas

and subject matter—clashed with the religious right over the state's role in supporting

art and what qualifies as appropriate for broad public consumption. Right-wing

politicians imposed content restrictions and loyalty oaths at the National Endowment for

the Arts that favored established and “safe” arts organizations, leaving diminished

institutional support for experimental art forms and anti-capitalist operating models.

They subjected those who resisted to retaliatory measures, including funding

moratoriums and criminal prosecutions.

In 2026, artists find themselves similarly situated. Attempts to reduce or eliminate arts

funding, ban books, censor museums, homogenize academic curriculum, outsource

creativity to algorithms, and dismantle diverse storytelling in TV and film all present

modern, albeit familiar, threats to contemporary creatives. Yet, as history demonstrates,

the artist perseveres, refusing to accept defeat—courageous, integrous, resourceful,

holding up a mirror, not to shame, but to see. The artist provokes, alchemizing

ubiquitous words, materials, sounds, and movements in ways that give them cultural,

social, and emotional resonance. The artist creates heroically, persisting because of a

relentless desire to save the world, or at least their corner of it. The artist moves in love,

including the tough variety.

The 2026 Indianapolis Creative Risk Fund recipients leveraged this opportunity to honor

that legacy. Each artist situates themself in a unique personal and creative challenge,

unearthing new ways to tell familiar stories, embracing vulnerability, critiquing the status

quo, and taking risks that are both personal and political. Projects explore the tension

between triumph and grief, between negligence and stewardship, and between

interdependence and isolation. The subject matter they explore—environmental

sustainability, displacement, systemic racism, substance use disorder, disability,

anti-violence—impacts audiences across many identities and lived experiences.

Time and again, audiences have exercised their agency to decide what art is valuable

and necessary, using both their public voice and material resources. Enduring support

for the arts suggests that they are willing to exchange their comfort for an expanded

worldview, or for their story to be told. In this symbiotic relationship, the creator is a

catalytic point of origin, and the spectator shapes meaning far beyond gallery walls,

pages, and stages. The Indianapolis Creative Risk Fund is thus not only an invitation to

artists, but to the public as well.

To learn more about the Indianapolis Creative Risk Fund, a program of Herbert Simon

Family Foundation, visit https://www.cicf.org/indianapolis-creative-risk-fund/.

About the Artists

Zola Lamothe (she/her)

Zola Lamothe works at the intersection of art and activism, using set photography to resurrect our shared history and educate communities in relevant, accessible, and impactful ways. Embracing the Ghanaian principle of Sankofa, her work revisits the past to inform and better our future. Zola’s photography project highlights how modern reality mirrors the height of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in America. She draws connections between the past and present by situating a figure in a KKK mask at various institutions that historically have been, and continue to be, sites of white supremacist oppression, including in government, education, and religious institutions. She hopes to expand viewers’ understanding of how the Klan was able to amass power in both covert and overt ways. Given the sensitivity of the subject matter and the current political climate, Zola assumes significant personal, financial, and political risk by courageously critiquing civic institutions on which artists and cultural workers often depend for professional opportunity and support.

 __________________________________________________________________

 Kaila Austin (she/her)

Kaila Austin is a social practice artist, recovering neighborhood histories through public art and archival practices. In 2019, she founded Rogue Preservation Services, a historic consulting organization working with historically African American communities to mobilize their histories and save their ancestral spaces through art. Kaila was invited (or “voluntold”, as she’d say) by her community to transform amber stained-glass windows from one of Indianapolis’ oldest churches, South Calvary Baptist, into a public art lantern sculpture that can illuminate the community’s meditation garden and commemorate 150 years of self-reliance and communal care in Fletcher Bottom. Never having worked in sculpture, and with limited experience in public art, Kaila leveraged the Creative Risk Fund to learn a new medium and honor the wishes of her community’s elders, eventually delivering a public artwork they can take great pride in. 

 ______________________________________________________________________

Corey Ewing (he/him)

Corey Ewing uses poetry and photography to critique his lived experience in America, the pervasive influence of fiction, and the realities of the military-industrial complex. Through the intersection of these mediums, he explores how we joyfully occupy space, and how space occupies us. Corey’s project How Like Us merges environmental critique, poetry, and organic material experimentation to explore themes of ecological consumption, impermanence, and the tension between preservation and decay as seen through ephemeral expression. His experiment with organic mediums relinquishes the creative process to several unpredictable natural elements that can dramatically alter the desired outcome. The project embraces the uncertainty inherent in natural processes, making his reflection on consumption and decay both a thematic and aesthetic exploration. 

 ____________________________________________________________________

Omar Rashan (he/him)

Omar Rashan is a multidisciplinary neuro-artist who combines visual art, environment, and immersive technology to create artistic experiences where creativity is both felt and seen. His practice centers accessibility and the ways mixed media, tactile surfaces, and augmented reality can bridge the gap between art and audience. Omar’s project Braille + AR: A New Language of Art is a multi-sensory art installation designed for and in collaboration with the blind and visually impaired community. Across a series of mixed media works on canvas and wood, each offers a layered sensory journey combining tactile textures, Braille text, and augmented reality. Although with deep experience in AR and artmaking, combining all the desired elements into cohesive works that are both functional and visually compelling presented a unique challenge. A challenge, once overcome, Omar believes can set a new standard for accessibility-focused, multi-sensory artmaking. 

 ______________________________________________________________________

Carlos Sosa, Jr. (he/him)

Carlos Sosa, Jr. is a professional designer with an expansive portfolio across communications, brand development, and artmaking in paint, sculpture, and digital illustration. Through his work, he explores complexity, tradition, and the everyday poetry of visual life. Carlos’ project Arrested Discouragement: Expressions of the DiaspoRican Resistance is a multi-month creative intervention that blends typography, public art, and communal education. Inspired by urban graffiti, Carlos produced and adhered giant typographic stickers to structures featuring charged, colloquial “Spanglish” phrases that confront colonial legacies, celebrate resistance, and reclaim narrative agency. Across Indianapolis, Puerto Rico, and other US cities, he aims to build a cross-regional creative network that sparks dialogue, pride, and critical reflection. Through Arrested Discouragement, Carlos departs from commissioned work to pursue an unsanctioned public intervention that takes a bold stance on Puerto Rican sovereignty and invites a dialogue on colonialism, identity, and community resistance.