Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND) today announced the four artists selected to receive 2025 Mohn LAND Grants: Susan Aparicio, Woohee Cho, Hannah Huntley, and yétúndé ọlágbajú. Mohn LAND Grants were introduced in 2023 as a new and ambitious initiative to invest in emerging Los Angeles artists by providing them with a platform to present site-responsive, transdisciplinary work across Los Angeles County. The program was developed in collaboration with art collectors and philanthropists Pamela and Jarl Mohn.
“I am excited to be supporting the work that these four artists are undertaking through the 2025 Mohn LAND grants,” Jarl Mohn said. “Supporting artists at every stage of their career is undoubtedly important, but perhaps critically so as they endeavor to produce public art and work in dialogue with their communities. LAND has long facilitated these relationships, creating opportunities that inspire young and emerging artists to grow their practices and explore new material. This latest cohort of grantees showcases the breadth and depth of the artists who call Los Angeles home, and I am incredibly eager to experience the projects they will produce over the next year.”
Founded in 2009, LAND is recognized for supporting artists who work outside of traditional models and who are deeply embedded in their communities. The initiative reflects LAND’s mission to empower artists to have autonomy over the presentation of their work and in more direct relationship with the public. Mohn LAND Grants provide critical support, visibility and context for an artist’s first major public commission.
Artists were nominated by current Mohn LAND Grant recipients, as well as other LA-based artists and curators. They were selected based on a criteria of artistic excellence, a depth of community engagement, and the potential of the support to elevate their career at this moment in their overall practice and progression.
The curatorial team at LAND — comprised of director Laura Hyatt, deputy director Christopher Mangum-James and curators-at-large Bryan Barcena and Irina Gusin—shares that “the artists awarded the 2025 Mohn LAND Grant are representative of the diversity of practices that exist in Los Angeles, and insofar the projects they propose span a variety of mediums and formats, with a particular focus on performance and finding ways that art can meet audiences in unconventional spaces.”
They continue: “This year’s cohort of emerging artists all engage with sculptural objects to create a focus around which audiences can gather, and in doing so create and reinforce new and existing communities within this city.
The exhibitions will include new works as well as reimaginings of previous projects for new contexts, using the communities and neighborhoods they live in across Los Angeles as both a muse and a foil. Several of these artists are eager to use the opportunity to highlight their network of collaborators, peers, and local organizations, and draw connection to their sources of vital care, mutual support, and inspiration.”
This year’s cohort of artists are currently developing their projects. New commissions by each artist will be presented by LAND over the coming year.
2025 MOHN LAND GRANT RECIPIENTS
Susan Aparicio (b. 1996 Los Angeles, CA) is a daughter of Mexican and Honduran parents and a visual artist working in the mediums of stained glass, experimental video, and site-specific installation. Her work explores genre through pop culture inspired imagery and a family archive of home footage from the 90s to today. These video tapes capture the humor, heartache, loss, and wonder that raised her in southeast LA. Once edited and installed, they become a family collaboration rooted in reflection and shared cultural memory. Aparicio’s installations invite viewers to reflect on their community and existence within our natural and digital worlds.
Woohee Cho is a visual artist based in Los Angeles and Seoul. His work focuses on moments in everyday life where individual identity collides with or is subsumed by society, queering these experiences through installation, video, and performance. Gathering, personalizing, and laughing are the primary methodologies of his practice. He has held solo exhibitions at Post Territory Ujeongguk, Seoul (2023). His works have been shown at Vox Populi, Philadelphia (2025); Human Resources, LA (2024); Brussels Independent Film Festival, Brussels (2022); Ann Arbor Film Festival, Ann Arbor (2021); Cork International Film Festival, Ireland (2021); OUTFEST Film Festival, Los Angeles (2021); Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery (2020); and Roy Edna Disney CalArts Theater (REDCAT) (2019), among others. He has been awarded artist residencies at the Alex Brown Foundation, Des Moines (2024); NARS Foundation, Brooklyn (2023); The REEF, Los Angeles (2020-2021); and Saas-Fee Summer Institute of Art, NYC (2019). He has also received grants, including the Visual Arts Fellowship from the Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture, Seoul (2023); and the Body and Tech Fellowship from The Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance at CalArts, Valencia (2019).
Hannah Huntley is a Los Angeles based visual artist. Using painting, sculpture, puppetry, and video Hunltey’s work aims to invoke a sense of comfort and nostalgia in her audience. She utilizes satire, anthropomorphism and pop culture to illustrate the absurdities of human nature, societal standards, gender, chronic illness, and disability. She received a BFA in printmaking at the University of Nevada, Reno in 2019 and an MFA at the University of Southern California in 2024.
yétúndé ọlágbajú is a research-based artist, creative producer, and cultural strategist living on Ohlone and Tataviam lands (Bay Area & Los Angeles, CA). Their work roots in a single question: What must we reckon with as we build a future, together? With no set answers or expectations, ọlágbajú unravels intricate connections as a means of highlighting our interdependence. They are interested in how our familial, platonic, romantic, and ecological bonds are affected by what we confront in the reckoning.
They hold an MFA from Mills College and are the recipient of multiple awards including a Foundation for Contemporary Arts award and a Headlands Center for the Arts fellowship. They recently became an advisor for the San Francisco Arts Commission’s, Shaping Legacy’s Artist Circle [San Francisco, CA] and participated in Life on Earth: Art and Ecofeminism at The Brick [Los Angeles, CA]. They are a co-director and creative producer at Level Ground [Los Angeles] and consult as a cultural organizing strategist.
Image credit: Amber Salik