Bangladeshi artist Firoz Mahmud nominated as panelist-judge for Queens Arts Fund

New York-based Bangladeshi artist Firoz Mahmood has been nominated as one of the panelists for the 2021 Queen's Arts Fund. He is the first Bangladeshi origin to be elected and invited as a panel judge to this prestigious New York state-based arts programme, reads a press release.

Queen's Arts Fund is funded by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council of Arts Decentralization Program where panel members are selected based on the artists' experience, names, and careers.

Artist Feroz Mahmud will be acting as a 2021 Queen's Arts Fund panelist to judge the quality of artwork projects, art events, and grant questions by providing advice, feedback, thoughtful insights, and efforts to a wide range of art services organizations.

In recent years, Queens Council on the Arts (QCA) has innovated a wide variety of programmes and events. Since its inception, QCA has awarded more than $2 million in grants to artists and arts organisations. It has provided arts education to more than a million Queens's schoolchildren while producing and presenting hundreds of exhibitions as well as guides, brochures, and maps of art sites in Queens.

Currently, QCA's workshops, website, and TV broadcasts have expanded its reach to more than 300,000 people every year.

Firoz Mahmud, who is also a recipient of two times QCA grant, will serve as a member of the Community Arts Grant Panel - Visual Arts/Multidisciplinary for the Queens Council of Arts.

Recently he has been awarded as one of 15 New York-based artists for exhibiting his artwork at JFK Airport by bringing forward the research and perspectives of Jamaica FLUX 2021 and JCAL.

The award is dedicated to advancing research and visual and performative actions that foster social change, critical public discourse on advocacy, policy change, economic growth, collective civic action, and community engagement.

He has been invited to exhibit at Ostrale Biennale in Germany from 1 July to 3 October 2021. 

In 2011, Firoz received the Asian Cultural Council (ACC) Fellowship in New York, and in 2009, he got the Art project Ideas prize from Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art Japan.