DC Artist Wins $10K Best In Show Award In Trawick Prize Competition

BETHESDA, MD — A Washington, D.C. artist was awarded the prestigious Best in Show prize in the 2023 Trawick Prize: Bethesda Contemporary Arts Awards at a reception Wednesday night.

Rex Delafkaran received the $10,000 top prize. Charles Mason III of Baltimore was named the second-place winner and given $2,000, followed by Stephanie Garon of Baltimore, who came in third place and received $1,000.

Megan Koeppel of Hyattsville was awarded the Young Artist Award and received $1,000.

The Trawick Prize is a juried art competition produced by the Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District.

Delafkaran is an Iranian American artist who holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute. She uses movement and objects to explore ideas of failure and hybridity among bodies, objects, identities and language.

Among her shows, Delafkaran has exhibited and staged performances at the NARS Foundation in Brooklyn; the Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum in Washington; the Panoply Performance Lab in Brooklyn; and the Platform Art Fair in Athens, Greece

She recently received a NARS Foundation International Artist Residency Fellowship and a Warhol Foundation Wherewithal Research Grant. She is also the co-founder and co-director of an artist-run project, empowering artists to be both self-sustain and experimental through selling artist-made products and curating exhibitions.

Entries were juried by Brandon Morse, associate professor and Chair of the art department at the University of Maryland; Jon-Phillip Sheridan, chair of the photography and film department at Virginia Commonwealth University; and Naoco Wowsugi, associate professor of art at American University.

Founded by Carol Trawick in 2003, the regional competition is one of the largest prizes to annually honor visual artists. Trawick, a longtime community activist in Bethesda, also established the Bethesda Painting Awards in 2005. She has served as the chair of the Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District, Bethesda Urban Partnership, Strathmore and the Maryland State Arts Council.

To date, The Trawick Prize has awarded nearly $300,000 in prize money and has exhibited the work of more than 160 regional artists.

The 2023 Trawick Prize Finalists were:

• Rush Baker IV, Riverdale
• Rex Delafkaran, Washington, D.C.
• Stephanie Garon, Baltimore
• Kei Ito, Baltimore
• Megan Koeppel, Hyattsville
• Giulia Livia, Baltimore
• Charles Mason III, Baltimore
• Fanxi Sun, Richmond, VA

The works of the finalists will be on exhibit at Gallery B, 7700 Wisconsin Avenue, Suite E, through Oct. 1. Gallery hours for the duration of the exhibit will be Thursday through Sunday from noon to 5 p.m.