Match maker

As the Rolex Arts Initiative, which pairs rising creative stars with masters in their fields, announces a new cycle, we look at a duo from its most recent iteration

- BILL PRINCE

It's official: that which separates us can also bring us together. Consider those practitioners who were enrolled in the ninth iteration of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative just as the pandemic struck.

The biennial multidisciplinary cultural exchange had launched its cycle in February 2020, leaving little time for its four mentors to embark on the intended yearlong collaboration with their respective protégés before the global shutdown brought a halt to proceedings.

Not so Carrie Mae Weems, the prominent visual artist chosen to mentor the young visual artist and filmmaker Camila Rodríguez Triana. Even though Weems was sequestered at her studio in Syracuse, NY, throughout the pandemic, and the Colombian-born Triana was similarly stranded in France, mentor enlisted protégée and set to work responding to the immediate effects on those most vulnerable.

'And that really helped us,' recalls Weems. 'Number one, because it grounded us. We needed to figure out what we were experiencing and what the impact was.

And not only on us but on the extended community around us as well. So that was an important first step, working together, working out language and text and image. And working out where to place that out in the world. It was wonderful to start on something that was really powerful and meaningful and touched us all.