Marking this Moment in Time: Pittsburgh Artists in 2020

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, The Heinz Endowments created Marking this Moment: Pittsburgh Artists in 2020, an initiative to put money in the hands of artists and document their impressions of the rapidly changing reality facing us all. Through the initiative, Kelly Strayhorn Theater granted fellowships to artists Lyam B. Gabel,  Jason Mendez, and sarah huny young. These artists’ work documenting the impacts of COVID on first generation college students in Latinx communities, archives queer care across pandemics, and highlighting the activism of Black and queer communities through protests against white supremacy, police brutality, and the prison industrial complex. These works can now be experienced as an exhibition in the Kelly Strayhorn Theater lobby February – June 2022. 

Marking this Moment in Time: Pittsburgh Artists in 2020 is made possible with support from The Heinz Endowments.

Lyam B. Gabel (they/them) is a performance-maker, community archivist, and social practice artist who creates containers for collective remembering and radical celebration. Their practice includes extensive archival research and long form oral histories that they curate in podcasts and performance events.

Jason Mendez (he/him) is a Boricua nonfiction writer, interdisciplinary theater artist, and educator from the Bronx, NY and the creative force behind The Block Chronicles. He is a visiting assistant professor of education in the Center for Urban Education at the University of Pittsburgh. 

sarah huny young (she/her) is an award-winning creative director and visual artist primarily documenting and exalting Black womanhood and queer communities through portraiture and video. Framing her subjects as collaborators, she often shoots on-location across the country in personal, intimate spaces of the subject’s choosing.