The Studios at MASS MoCA is pleased to announce the awardees of 2024’s second batch of residency fellowships! Each of these artists will receive a free residency at the Studios, thanks to our many generous partners and funders.
Congratulations to this season’s fellows:
MASSACHUSETTS FAMILY FELLOWSHIP
General Fellowships:
(funded by the Donald A. Pels Charitable Trust and an anonymous donor)
Photo by Saurabh Anand
O-Jeremiah Agbaakin
Athens, Georgia
O-Jeremiah Agbaakin is the author of The Sign of the Ram (Akashic, 2023), selected by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani for the New Generation African Poets Chapbook Box set. His poems are featured/forthcoming in Cincinnati Review, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, EPOCH, Guernica, Kenyon Review, POETRY, Poetry Society of America, TRANSITION, & elsewhere. He has received scholarships and fellowships from MASS MoCA, Bread Loaf, Tin House, Key West Literary Seminar; placed second for Grist Journal Contest, finalist of Black Warrior Review contest and Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets. He’s a doctoral student of Creative Writing at the University of Georgia.
Photo by JaLeel Marques Porcha
Njari Anderson
West Palm Beach, Florida
Njari Anderson (b. 2001, Clarendon, Jamaica) investigates sites of cultural exploitation intrinsic to Black daily life. Blurring the lines between critique and provocation, his work narrativizes subjects concerning loss, visibility, peril, and the pleasures of ambiguity.
In his practice, Anderson engages the Black quotidian, its relationship to digitally-aided methods of making, and the various lenses through which Black daily life is warped, stretched, chopped, and screwed. The Internet and his Caribbean identity are central to his practice: Black Twitter, WorldStarHiphop, WhatsApp, and #BlackLivesMatter. He navigates these spaces to resist the sense of placelessness granted to him by his Caribbean-immigrant identity. Part referential and part critical, he revisits these spaces in search of moments of pleasure, masculinity, queerness, voyeurism, exploitation, violence, grief, and resolution intrinsic to Blackness.
Aimed at embodying Black culture's malleability, Anderson's trans-disciplinary practice resists easy viewing. He chooses to mask labor and material to prioritize conceptual intent. Viewing computer-aided design tools as collaborators in his practice, he creates inversions of existing materials using additive and subtractive processes. For Anderson, these CAD tools function like chisels, while the files and subsequent sculptures he creates are like infinitely malleable stones. Calling on cultural references, he allows these CAD tools to invade his extended metaphors to render richer narratives. Anderson's interest in the fault lines, slippages, and second viewings stemming from opaque understandings of his practice allows him to exist within, across, and beyond limits levied onto him by his Blackness.
Clayton Bradshaw-Mittal
The plains, OHio
Clayton Bradshaw-Mittal (they/them) is a queer, previously unhoused veteran who holds an MFA in Fiction from Texas State University and a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Southern Mississippi. They are an alum of the Vermont Studio Center and of the Tin House Winter Workshop. Their fiction can be found in Story, Fairy Tale Review, F(r)iction, South Carolina Review, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Other work appears in The Rumpus, Barrelhouse, Consequence, and additional journals. Their writing has won the Plaza Short Story Prize; been a finalist for the Iron Horse First Book Prize, the Press 53 Award for Short Fiction, the Kinder-Crump Award for Short Fiction, and the Saints + Sinners LGBTQ Short Fiction Prize; and has been longlisted for the W.S. Porter Prize. They teach creative writing at Gannon University and are the Managing Editor of New Ohio Review.
Photo by Kiara Torres
Bryan Fernandez
manhattan, new york
“It’s one thing to be looked at, and another to be seen.” - Caleb Azumah Nelson, Open Water
I am a Dominican-American artist from Washington Heights, New York—whose artistic practice centers around the visibility of marginalized communities of my cultural background. As an Afro-Dominican, I observed my demographic's lack of authentic representation in white media. In reaction, I create large-scale figurative mixed media pieces to tell stories of who my people are—countering Colonial and anti-black narratives portrayed within the mainstream.
Benjamin Garcia
Auburn, new york
Benjamin Garcia is a 2023 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow in poetry. His first collection, THROWN IN THE THROAT, was selected for the National Poetry Series, the Eugene Paul Nassar Poetry Prize, and was a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. He worked for ten years as a sexual health and harm reduction educator in New York’s Finger Lakes region, where he received the Jill Gonzalez Health Educator Award recognizing contributions to HIV treatment and prevention. A CantoMundo and Lambda Literary fellow, he serves as core faculty at Alma College’s low-residency MFA program. His poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in: AGNI, American Poetry Review, Indiana Review, Kenyon Review, and New England Review.
He is currently at work on a multimedia project exploring autism and ADHD. His video poem “Ode to the Peacock” is available for viewing at the Broad Museum’s website as part of El Poder de la Poesia: Latinx Voices in Response to HIV/ AIDS.
Photo by Chanhee Heo
Simon Han
Medford, MAssachusetts
Simon Han is the author of the novel Nights When Nothing Happened (Riverhead Books, 2020), which was named an Indie Next Pick and best book of the year by Time, the Washington Post, Harper's Bazaar, and Texas Monthly. His stories have been published in Virginia Quarterly Review, the Iowa Review, Guernica, Fence, and Electric Literature, and his essays have appeared in The Atlantic, Aperture, Lit Hub, and the Paris Review Daily. He has received support from MacDowell, Willapa Bay AiR, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. Born in Tianjin, China and raised in various cities in Texas, he lives in Medford, MA and teaches at Tufts University. He is at work on a second novel.
Photo by Alan Kimara Dixon
Maurya Kerr
Oakland, california
Maurya Kerr is a bay area-based writer and artist. Her poetry has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net prizes and appears in multiple journals, including an anthology, “The Future of Black: Afrofuturism, Black Comics, and Superhero Poetry.” Much of her artistic work, across disciplines, is focused on black and brown people reclaiming their birthright to both wonderment and the quotidian. Recent honors include winning Rhino Poetry's 2024 Editor's Prize, second place in Palette Poetry's 2023 Resistance & Resilience Prize, and the 2022 Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest. Her first chapbook, MUTTOLOGY, was published by Small Harbor Publishing in late 2023, and her second, tommy noun, in spring 2024 by C&R Press.
Janice Lardey
Providence, Rhode Island
Janice Lardey is an experimental artist from Ghana and a graduate from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), USA, where she earned her Master of Fine Arts in Printmaking. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting and Sculpture from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana.
Lardey’s profound interest in surfaces, color, patterns, and textures has been pivotal in shaping her artistic practice and her research into textiles and print cultures. Her works explore various media, including printmaking, painting, drawing, applique, dyeing, sewing, and papermaking. Her work examines themes such as societal gender roles, patriarchy, the everyday, sustainability, domesticity, loss, the transient nature of life, and material effects.
Quique Lee
Guatemala City, Guatemala
Quique Lee was born in Antigua Sacatepéquez in 1977 and currently resides and works in Ciudad de Guatemala. He began his artistic journey in the late 1990s alongside the post-war generation, initially focusing on literature and later expanding into visual arts, installation, and performance. During this period, he studied under Guatemalan-American artist Daniel Schafer. After completing studies in marketing, Lee delved into costume design as a means of expression, leading him to explore textile art with an artistic approach in 2011. It was during this year that he commenced his production using embroidery, a technique for which he became renowned. Since then, Lee has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions, as well as international biennials. He is a founding member of the art collectives Sitio/Seña and Fábrica de Bombas. Additionally, he has been involved in audiovisual projects and written publications. His projects often address social themes, involve community collaboration, and span multiple disciplines.
"I create art to foster social change. My expression thrives through textiles, with embroidery being my preferred technique, alongside interdisciplinary projects. Currently, I am dyeing fabrics using metal oxides and earth. In the past, much of my work revolved around individual and collective memory, mapping physical time/space and migration. Over the last year, my research delves into masculinity construction and social pressures."
Photo by Thương Hoài Trần
Maddie May
Chicago, illinois
Maddie May is an interdisciplinary artist based in Chicago, IL. Growing up in a turbulent environment, May has lived in 26 houses, which instilled in them an investigative lens into relationships, everyday objects, and the spaces they inhabit. Their multi-sensory works magnify the emotional residue of Midwest lower-class households through textiles, sculpture, print, scent, and sound. Objects express intimacy, domesticity, turmoil, and discomfort, existing as characters that exemplify the physiological aftermath of abrasive events within the home. Influenced by childhood and personal memories, May's work addresses cycles of trauma, addiction, grief, fear, and violence.
May holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA from Kendall College of Art and Design. They have exhibited at Vox Populi (Philadelphia, PA), Urban Institute of Contemporary Arts (Grand Rapids, MI), and Ruschwoman (Chicago, IL) to name a few. Recently, they held solo exhibitions at Northeastern Illinois University (Chicago, IL) and Wittenberg University (Springfield, OH), with an upcoming solo show at Comfort Station (Chicago, IL) in 2024. May received a City of Chicago DCASE Grant in 2023 and has been an artist in residence at The Residency Project (Pasadena, CA) in 2024.
Photo by Eryka Dellenbach.
A.J. McClenon
Chicago, Illinois
A.J. McClenon is a multidisciplinary artist born and raised in Washington, DC, and currently resides in Chicago. A.J. is a fellowship recipient at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and received a Masters in Fine Arts (2014); and a Bachelor of Arts with a minor in creative writing from the University of Maryland College Park and also studied at The New School. A.J. has performed and shown work in spaces like the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago Filmmakers, LA Film Forum, Echo Park Film Center, Danspace Project, Woman Made Gallery, Longwood Art Gallery, Roman Susan Gallery, Links Hall, the National Museum of African American History & Culture, and Hyde Park Art Center. Alongside artistic experiences, A.J. is passionate about teaching, youth rights, and community collaborations and is currently the co-founder of Film School. This touring film series features Black films that have remained in obscurity.
While excavating tangible ways to approach sonic textures A.J.'s work arrives as poems, Bildungsroman refrains, visual scores, and mixed media translations through performance, installation, repurposed materials, drawings, and moving images. These works represent “place," nature, and the body. Processes of regeneration: sound from image and then the image to material/objects; found and collected objects to assemblage become articulations for Black migrations, geomorphology, escapism, and ecosystems found in nature and technology.
LaRissa Rogers
Ruckersville, virginia
Rogers (b.1996) is a visual artist born in Charlottesville, VA. She holds a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and a MFA from the University of California Los Angeles. Rogers has exhibited and performed in institutions such as Super Dakota (Brussels), Fields Projects (NY), M+B Gallery (LA), LACE (LA), the California Museum of Photography, Riverside (CA), The Wattis Institute of Contemporary Art (CA), The Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art (VA), and Documenta 15 (Germany), among others. She received the Visual Arts fellowship at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (2022) and The Fine Arts Work Center Fellowship (2023-2024). She held residencies at BEMIS Center of Contemporary Art (2022), and Black Spatial Relics (2022) with upcoming residencies at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and MASS MoCA. Rogers was named 2024 Forbes 30 under 30 in Art and Style, and cofounded the alternative monument and community gathering space "Operations of Care" with Luis Vasquez La Roche, located in Charlottesville, VA. In 2024, Rogers will be installing "Going to Ground," a public sculpture with the Rose Kennedy Greenway, Boston.
Rogers is a Tenure- track Assistant Professor in Sculpture within the department Art and Art History at The University of Virgina, and is currently represented by Super Dakota.
Photo by Chris Cox
Uche Okonkwo
Lincoln, Nebraska
Uche Okonkwo’s stories have been published in Zyzzyva, A Public Space, One Story, the Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2019, and Lagos Noir, among others. A former Bernard O’Keefe Scholar at Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and resident at Art Omi, she is a recipient of the George Bennett Fellowship at Phillips Exeter Academy, a Steinbeck Fellowship, and an Elizabeth George Foundation grant. Okonkwo grew up in Lagos, Nigeria, and is currently pursuing a creative writing PhD at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Photo by Mel Taing
Jessica Roseman
Lexington, Massachusetts
Jessica Roseman (she/her) creates interdisciplinary performances and community-based movement projects to help people sense, feel, and move better. Jess’s choreography reveals unspoken truths about mothering, ancestry, and wellbeing, encouraging empathy with her audience. In her work, she incorporates techniques from her vocations as a Feldenkrais Practitioner, Gyrotonic Instructor, and licensed massage therapist. Her award-winning, multi-year restorative practice NOURISH provides deep physical connection to ourselves, each other, and our environment by recognizing and choosing what we need in the moment. She is developing an immersive, interactive NOURISH exhibition that gently bridges the gaps between public performance and personal experience; active dancer and “passive” audience; movement and visual art.
Jessica lives in unceded territory of the Massachusett & Pawtucket people known as Lexington, MA with her twin teens. She has held residencies at Lexington Community Farm, Arrow Street Arts, Subcircle, Bearnstow, and Atlantic Center for the Arts. A New England States Touring Artist, Jessica has worked with Now + There, DeCordova Museum & Sculpture Park, Monkeyhouse, Miami Light Project, Movement Research, The Field, Global Arts Live, and ICA Boston, among others. Jess has a BA with Honors in Dance and African American Studies from Wesleyan University, and is pursuing a PhD in Interdisciplinary Design and Media at Northeastern.
Photo by Andrew Michael Joseph
Anna Rotty
Albuquerque, new mexico
Anna Rotty (b.1989) lives on Tiwa land known as Albuquerque. She recently received her MFA from the University of New Mexico, where she has the privilege to continue teaching photography. Anna investigates water, light, and infrastructure, informing her understanding of orientation and place. By constructing landscapes and making light a priority, she looks to highlight the intangible and emotional aspects of the world. Anna's work has been published by Southwest Contemporary, Humble Arts Foundation, and Lenscratch. She is a current Fellow at the Silver Eye Center for Photography and has recently exhibited at Strata Gallery in Santa Fe, Chung 24 Gallery in San Francisco, and the Houston Center for Photography. Anna is part of Collective Constructs, a collaborative group of artists and art historians engaging with public visual scholarship to work from the permanent collection at the University of New Mexico Art Museum.
Pallavi Singh
New Delhi, India
Pallavi Singh (b. 1988) is an artist from New Delhi, India, known for challenging social norms and gender stereotypes through her art. Holding a Master's in Fine Art from the College of Art, Delhi, Singh has showcased her work both nationally and internationally.
Singh's artistic journey is adorned with prestigious awards, including residencies at The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, USA (2015), the Vermont Studio Centre, USA (2019), and being a finalist in the 10th Sovereign Asian Art Prize ’13-’14. Recently, she received the Space 118 Fine Art Grant 2022-2023 (India).
Her artistic exploration spans various mediums, delving into themes such as sexuality, desire, grooming, corporate culture, and cultural inheritance. Singh's art challenges conventional roles and societal norms, drawing inspiration from personal experiences and observations.
Central to Singh's exploration is the evolution of masculinity in Indian urban landscapes, where she blends elements of modern mass media with Indian mythology. In her paintings, Singh intentionally showcases male bodies in their raw authenticity, disrupting the notion that beauty is exclusively reserved for the female form. Through this deliberate approach, she aims to subvert the historical dominance of the male gaze in artistic narratives, sparking a visual dialogue that reimagines identity and embraces flexibility in perceptions of gender.
Drawing from everyday life, Singh's art invites introspection and contemplation. Her figures navigate between intimate and performative spaces, adorned with motifs and symbols that transcend rigid traditional definitions of gender. Through dynamic exploration, she crafts a visual language that celebrates the multifaceted essence of humanity, urging viewers to immerse themselves in the narratives she presents.
In this artistic dialogue, Singh extends an invitation to move beyond the frame, celebrate diversity, and embrace the boundless ways through which human essence finds expression. Singh is currently represented by Art Heritage Gallery in Delhi, India.
Anthony Smith
Allentown, pennsylvania
Anthony Smith received a B.A. in Fine Arts from Amherst College (1999) and an M.F.A. in Painting from the University of Michigan (2001). He’s shown nationally most recently in the “Might Real/Queer Detroit Exhibit”, Detroit (2022) and in “Telling Our Story” at the David Driskell Center, University of Maryland, College Park, MD. Smith has also shown in various Pennsylvania exhibitions including at the Bethlehem House Gallery in 2016, 2019, and 2022, and in “The New Normal” at Moravian University Payne Gallery (2021). He’s been reviewed in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Detroit Free Press, and the Artist’s Magazine to name a few. Smith has taught at the University of Michigan, Parsons, Princeton, MICA, Lehigh, and Muhlenberg Colleges. Domestically he has served as artist-in-residence at the National Academy of Design (2006 – 2008), the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT in 2016 and 2022 the MacDowell Residency in Peterborough NH in 2023, and at the Banana Factory Art Center from 2014 to today. Internationally, Smith traveled in January 2023 to Senegal Africa as part of the CAORC-WARC Faculty Development Seminar and to Sanquhar, Scotland as part of Kolaj Magazine’s Collage: Scotland residency program. He currently teaches art at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania. He lives in Allentown Pennsylvania with a studio at the Banana Factory Art Center in nearby Bethlehem.
Massachusetts Family Fellowship:
(funded by the Barr Foundation)
Photo by AfroCentered Media
Alison Croney Moses
Roslindale, Massachusetts
A Boston based artist, Alison Croney Moses creates wooden objects that reach out to your senses—the smell of cedar, the color of honey or the deep blue sea, the round form that signifies safety and warmth, the gentle curve that beckons to be touched.
Born and raised in North Carolina (USA), by Guyanese parents, making clothing, food, furniture, and art is embedded in her memories of childhood. She carries these values and habits into adulthood and parenting—creating experiences, conversations, and educational programs that cultivate the current and next generation of artists and leaders in art and craft. Her work is in the collections at Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She is a recipient of the 2023 Boston Artadia Award, the 2022 USA Fellowship in Craft, and a finalist of the 2024 LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize. Her work has been featured in American Craft Magazine Boston Art Review. She was recently named one of the 2023 WBUR 10 Makers. In the Fall of 2023, Alison’s first solo was reviewed in the Boston Globe. Alison holds an MA in Sustainable Business & Communities from Goddard College, and a BFA in Furniture Design from Rhode Island School of Design.
Oregon Visual Arts Fellowship:
(funded by The Ford Family Foundation)
Self portrait by Yalda Eskandari
Yalda Eskandari
eugene, oregon
Yalda Eskandari is an Iranian artist, who has been working as an interdisciplinary artist since 2011. Her work particularly focuses on the definition of reality — on how our definition of the word could impact the way we define placement and femininity. Her research-based work references psychological and sociological perspectives to challenge established mindsets. She currently is living and working in the US.
Photo by: Holli Margell/Native Light Photography
Liza Faktor
Portland, Oregon
Liza Faktor (b. 1975) is a visual artist and independent curator. Her practice is informed by how the memories and traumas of humans and the land are intertwined; how we and landscapes process violence; and how we might heal. She’s interested in how our various geographies are connected through colonial past, extraction economy, and in the future of the natural world. Her image-making is connected with her engagement with other artists and communities, and is heavily influenced by collaboration with activists and scientists.
Her work was exhibited in Spain, Norway, China, Russia, UK and the US, and is in private collections in the UK, Switzerland, Lebanon, Russia, and the US. She is the recent recipient of Oregon Regional Arts & Culture Council grant (2023) and Oregon Arts Commission Career Opportunity grant (2022).
Apart from her own artistic practice Liza has worked as a curator and creative producer with visual artists and filmmakers on award-winning installations, films and multi-platform projects. She curated over twenty exhibitions and festival programs on the intersection of visual arts, film, performance and emerging media, lectured and taught workshops in the US, the UK, Italy, France, the Netherlands, Brazil, Spain, UAE, Australia and Russia. She immigrated from Russia in 2010 and is based in Portland, OR.
University Fellowships:
(In partnership with the following universities):
James Gold (Boston University)
brookline, massachusetts
“At once ancient and futuristic, my paintings depict fragments of hypothetical archaeology. Their lustrous surfaces are created with traditional painting techniques, yet are influenced by the hyperreality of digital imagery, occupying a space between fact and fable.
”In my recent work, a papyrus scroll unfurls like a flag against a glowing coral background, an illusionistic black-and-white mosaic reveals swirling silhouetted artifacts, and an array of floating golden fragments on an electric-blue background suggests cartographic contours of islands and oceans. The cropped compositions imply that each painted object might extend infinitely beyond the edges.
”My studio is an alchemical laboratory where I explore the sensuality of diverse materials. Starting with a sandy-textured pigmented gesso, I layer India ink, egg tempera, and sign-painting enamel in a range of shimmering colors, using stamps, brushes, abrasives, and calligraphy pens to realize objects that appear found, even to me. Viewers are invited into a world of “willing suspension of disbelief” as color and form become trompe l’oeil fragments of marble, tapestry, and papyrus. I create my paintings with love and care, and as I foreground an imagined future, I invite viewers to rethink the physicality of our contemporary world.
”Each painting grows out of in-depth research and prompts investigations into an ever-expanding web of topics. As I read about archaeology, the history of design, neuroscience, geology, and the language of symbols, I gather and condense information into the surfaces of my paintings, driven by a desire to freely share the excitement of my discovery with viewers. This cycle of expansion (through learning) and compression (through making) allows me to cast a wide net, as I explore the question: What does our historical imagination look like?”
Afsaneh Aynesazi
(Massachusetts College of Art and Design)
belmont, massachusetts
Afsaneh Aynesazi (b.1983) is an Iranian artist based in the US. Her journey in art began in her childhood with her grandfather Ostad Esmail Arjang--the renowned father of Iranian sculpting and etching.
Afsaneh works at the intersection of photography and mixed media. Through collage work, she problematizes objectifications inherent within photographic representation to depict the nuanced realities of Iranian women.
Her work frames ever-present coercive gazes upon women's bodies, showing the power of that gaze to dismember and reduce women's bodies to objects of desire.
Anoushé Shojae-Chaghorvand
(Maine College of Art and Design)
new brunswick, new jersey
Photo by Billy Dufala.
Anoushé Shojae-Chaghorvand is a Philadelphia based transdisciplinary artist who works primarily in kinetic sculpture. She creates “spatial cinema”—time-based, looping, high- tension scenes—in the form of performative installations that capture the complexity, violence, and absurdity of our American Dream. Shojae-Chaghorvand’s work encompasses a variety of time-based media, initially beginning her artistic practice in performance art and then expanding into kinetic sculpture. In her work, Shojae- Chaghorvand is drawn to the ephemeral and plays with the notion of liveness, using kinetics because of their propulsion to their own destruction. She is currently interested in recreating the escapist tactics of amusement in Western culture. Anoushé received her BFA from Maine College of Art in 2019, her MFA from Rutgers Mason Gross School of the Arts and attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2022, a 2023 fellow at A.I.R. Gallery in New York, and most recently an artist in residence at RAIR (Recycled Artist In Residence) in Philadelphia.
Jalen Williams (Maryland Institute College of Art)
North Charleston, South Carolina
Jalen J. Williams is a photographer/video artist based in Charleston, SC. He received his B.F.A in Studio Art (Photography) from Coker University and is currently pursuing his Master's degree in the Photography + Media & Society program at the Maryland Institute College of Art.
"The visual image is important to the narratives we create about ourselves and our environment, and photography is the most fulfilling way for me to explore these concepts, allowing me to create and re-create conceptual situations people can relate to visually, bridging cultural and individual boundaries in an attempt to reach a sense of familiarity."
Jazlyne Wooden (Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art)
Willingboro, new jersey
Jazlyne Sabree (b. 1990, New Jersey) is an interdisciplinary artist based in the Greater Philadelphia area. She received her Bachelors in Art from Clark Atlanta University, an HBCU in Atlanta, GA where she studied art and journalism. She then went on to become an art educator, returning to college to receive her Masters in Art Education at Boston University. She is now pursuing her Masters in Fine Art at Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art. She is a recipient of the Clark Atlanta University Art Guild Award, the Linda Lora Pugliese Award for Excellence in Art Education, and the PAFA Venture Fund Grant. Additionally, she has been featured on platforms such as News 12, WHYY, several podcasts such as The Truth in this Art, and publications such as Create! Magazine. She has exhibited with many esteemed artists such as Lavett Ballard and internationally with Justin Randolph Thompson and is currently exhibiting across the US east coast. Most recently in 2023, she was awarded a teaching artist residency in Monrovia, Liberia in West Africa at the Cachelle International Creative Arts Center, as well as the Casa Na Ilha Artist Residency in Ilhabela, São Paolo, Brazil.
Sangwoo Yoo (School of the Art Institute of Chicago)
Chicago, illinois
Sangwoo Yoo, born in Seoul, is an artist driven by the intention to reawaken modern senses and aims to engage with social realities and the environment through the ecological cycles of materials. He received his Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the United States and Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Seoul in Korea.
Yoo was the recipient of the 2024 Eldon Danhausen Fellowship, 2025 Anderson Ranch Arts Center, 2024 MASS MoCA Residency Fellowship, which was fully sponsored by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and has been nominated for both the AICAD Post-Graduate Teaching Fellowship and the MFA Fellowship in Painting and Sculpture. He won the second-place award in the 2023 William and Dorothy Yeck Award, and was the grand prize winner of the Hoguk Art Exhibition in Korea in 2016. His works have been displayed in renowned Korean institutions such as The War Memorial of Korea, the United Nations Peace Memorial Hall, the Yanggu Humanities Museum, and the ChunCheon National Museum. One of his pieces is currently part of the collection at The War Memorial of Korea in Seoul.
Moreover, Sangwoo is scheduled to participate in the 2024 EXPO CHICAGO with sponsorship from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has held several solo exhibitions at Comfort Station Gallery, SITE Gallery in Chicago, Dos Gallery, and Red Brick Gallery in Seoul.
Saida Blair (School of the Art Institute of Chicago)
Chicago, illinois
Photo by Latricia Morgan
Storytelling is an integral part of Black culture. As a Caribbean oral historian and artist from Harlem, NY, this is a critical idea that propels Saida Blair’s work as a storyteller.
Blair’s interest in storytelling was sparked as a child when trying to understand her cultural background as a Trinidadian and Jamaican girl; sneaking into the hallway to grasp the whispers of her aunts and uncle gossiping about home. She pieced together these different narratives, creating a visual mosaic of what “home” looked like to her.
Blair carries on this methodology now as an adult. She collects stories shared with her and uses her passion for art to create conversations around topics and events that affect herself and her community. She uses a mixture of contemporary and archival images from various timelines to create a dynamic narrative of the past. Her goal in creating these conversations is to have people engage with the works in a brave and open environment.
Blair graduated from SUNY Purchase with a BFA in Photography and Art History and recently graduated with an MA in Visual and Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Dana Buzzee (University of Oregon MFA)
Calgary, Canada
Dana Buzzee is a visual artist and arts educator based in Mohkinstsis/Calgary. Rooted in a materialist approach to queer hauntology, Buzzee's interdisciplinary practice explores consumer fetishism's ties to extractive capitalist economies, serving as a narrative medium for deep-time storytelling and speculative futurity.
With a BFA from the Alberta College of Art and Design (2012) and an MFA from the University of Oregon (2022), Buzzee has exhibited and participated in residencies across Canada, the United States, and Europe. Their recent exhibition record includes shows at Orchid Contemporary (Hamilton, ON, 2023), HOT*BED (Philadelphia, PA, 2022), Ditch Contemporary (Springfield, OR, 2022), Eugene Contemporary (Eugene, OR, 2021), The Plumb (Toronto, ON, 2021), Harcourt House (Edmonton, AB, 2019), and Stride Gallery (Calgary, AB, 2018). Additionally, Buzzee's practice has received support through grants from the Calgary Arts Development Authority, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and the Canada Council for the Arts.
Kat Thompson (Virginia Commonwealth University MFA)
Centreville, virginia
Kat Thompson is a multidisciplinary Afro-Jamaican American artist based in Virginia, who works with photography, textiles, sculptural collages, and installations. Her work combines these mediums to explore notions of Black selfhood within the African Diaspora. Being of Jamaican heritage, Thompson confronts her dual identity through recent projects that depict traces of her family’s journey through personal and found materials. Her focus is to uncover stories that mirror parts of ourselves back to us, including our histories, current realities, and future possibilities. Her works have been exhibited at the Fenwick Gallery and Gillespie Gallery at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA, and the Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art in Reston, Virginia. She was the 2021-2022 recipient of the Young Alumni Commissioning Award, College of Visual and Performing Arts: George Mason University and was also awarded the 2023-2025 Hamiltonian Artists Fellowship.
Thompson holds her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from George Mason University and her Master of Fine Arts in Photography & Film from Virginia Commonwealth University.
Adam Amram (Yale University)
new haven, connecticut
Adam Amram (b.1994 Haifa, Israel), is primarily a painter, whose process is fundamentally rooted in drawing. His interest lies in discovering moments in reality that offer a portal into the realm of the unconscious. Through dynamic color relationships, unmistakable paint application, and playfully animated forms, Amram’s paintings explore the interrelations between time, recollection, and the imagination.