We, MFAs Against Genocide, are a collective of recent and prospective graduates in the Montreal arts community and are reaching out to you as you are a signatory to PACBI. As a collective, we are organizing an institutional and individual boycott of the Stephen and Claudine Bronfman Fellowship in Contemporary Art Fellowship. We are asking for your support in order to increase our pressure, and to call on artists, cultural workers, academics, and institutions to refuse together to be complicit in artwashing.
The fellowship, which is awarded annually to Concordia and UQAM studio arts graduate students, is funded by Claridge Inc; Stephen Bronfman's Montreal-based private equity firm that, in 2015, opened a parallel firm in Tel Aviv focused on Israeli tech investments. These investments include Cyberbit, a a cyber security, warfare, and espionage company that lists the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) as one of their key clients. Claridge Isreal is also invested in D-fend Solutions, which provides counter-drone technology to clients including the Israeli ministry of defense and the United States departments of War and Homeland Security. In August of this year La Caisse de Dépôt et Placement du Québec announced that it is in the process of selling off its investments (valued between $400M - $600M CAD) in Claridge Israel; we believe it is long past time for our institutions to do the same and divest from the Isreali occupation and genocide. For more information about the award, the campaign, and our demands, please see our website: https://mfasagainstgenocide.cargo.site/
