The Studios at MASS MoCA is pleased to announce the awardees of 2024’s first 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:
OREGON VISUAL ARTIST FELLOWSHIPS
PUERTO RICO ARTIST FELLOWSHIPS
General Fellowships:
(funded by the Donald A. Pels Charitable Trust and an anonymous donor)
Photo by: Patricia Sales
Rodriguez Remor
Igatu, Chapada Diamantina, brazil
Denis Rodriguez and Leonardo Remor are artists, curators, and researchers. They reflect on the Art and Nature dyad in projects that focus on rural areas, the land, and the transmission of ancestral knowledge and technologies of popular creators and the Indigenous peoples of Eastern South America. Since August 2020, they have resided in Igatu, Chapada Diamantina, Bahia, where they founded Mirante Xique-Xique, a para-institution that promotes research residencies in different areas: environment, architecture, cuisine, and arts. Through cultural activities, exchanges, and environmental education, the non-governmental, non-profit organization’s mission is to safeguard the region’s architectural and intangible heritage.
Photo by: Thuóng Hoài Trân
Janhavi Khemka
Chicago, Illinois
Born in 1993 in Varanasi, India, Janhavi Khemka is an interdisciplinary artist based in Chicago. She completed her Master of Studio Art degree in print media from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2022. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Painting and Printmaking from the Faculty of Visual Art, Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi, India (2015) and a Master of Fine Art in Printmaking from Graphics Kala Bhavan, Visva Bharati University in Santiniketan (2017).
Her current artistic research has an intersection of traditional printmaking, animation, fiber arts, and performance. She has exhibited her artwork in regional, national, and international galleries and institutions throughout the United States, India, Norway, Korea, and the United Kingdom.
Recently she received the 63rd National Award 2023, Lalit Kala Academi, in printmaking for "Sapna" and a Printmaking Today Graduate Award for Winter Issues Magazine in December 2022 from Cello Press Limited, Witney, UK. In 2023, she was selected to present a solo exhibition at Comfort Station in Logan Square, Chicago. She has recently been invited to attend a residency at Kala’s Artist in Residence Program in Berkeley, California, and will begin a three-month 3Arts/Bodies of Work residency in Fall 2023.
Photo by: Carolina Xia
Antonius-Tin Bui
New Haven, Connecticut
Antonius Bui is a poly-disciplinary artist and shapeshifter invested in the transformative potential of ritual, portraiture, craft, and performance. Their ever-glitching identity as a queer, nonbinary, Vietnamese-American significantly informs the way they visualize hybrid identities and histories.
They are the child of Paul and Van Bui, two Vietnamese refugees who sacrificed everything to provide a future for their four kids and extended family. Born and raised in Bronx, NY, Antonius eventually moved to Houston before pursuing a BFA at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MIC/A).
Since graduating in 2016, Antonius has been fortunate to receive fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center, Kala Art Institute, Tulsa Artists Fellowship, Halcyon Arts Lab, Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Yaddo, Anderson Center at Tower View, The Growlery, Jentel, and Fine Arts Work Center.
Antonius has exhibited at various institutional, private, public, and underground venues, including the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, IA&A at Hillyer, Lawndale Art Center, Pennsylvania College of Art & Design, Artscape, Satellite Art Fair Austin, Blaffer Art Museum, Laband Art Gallery, USC’s Pacific Asia Museum, Urban Institute of Contemporary Art, and Smithsonian Arts & Industries Building.
Murjoni Merriweather
Baltimore, Maryland
As a black woman artist from Maryland, Murjoni Merriweather has found that the best way to create and talk about black culture is through art, especially claywork. As a student from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), Murjoni creates sculpted beings that are based around real people and real experiences. Her work addresses and eliminates stereotypes through clay portraits and video work. With this, she enjoys going against the European standards of “beauty” that are placed upon people of color (light skin, petite figure, etc.), and normalizing what is natural about black bodies, loving and accepting them as they come.
Murjoni makes artwork, connections and reflections with herself and others based on shared experiences. As she deepens her craft, she plans to continue eliminating stereotypes and prejudices while uplifting the black community.
Zella Vanié
New York, New York
Photo by: Khalil Bowens
Zella Vanié is a multidisciplinary artist who splits their time between New York City and Côte d’Ivoire. They paint large-scale ‘scenes of protest’ that center Black Queer identity and a reverence for nature and the immaterial. They draw inspiration from their Kentucky military town upbringing, automatic drawings, and dialogue with friends and contemporaries. Their works are bright with color and transparencies to bring the viewer into dualities of light and dark, nihilism and beauty, captivity and freedom.
Vanié has shown work in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Philadelphia, and Amsterdam, where their work was in a group show that marked 150 years since slavery was abolished in Dutch colonies. They have received grants and residencies from Flux Factory, Carrie Able gallery, and The Other Art Fair; and have been mentioned in Untitled Magazine and Hyperallergic Magazine.
Vanié served four years in the US Army as a satellite technician with deployments to Iraq and Haiti; and they are a founding board member of the Black Veterans Project. They hold an MFA in Interaction Design from the School of Visual Arts; and have taught courses at New York University and California College of the Arts.
“My work centers the idea that personal and collective imagination are a powerful tool for liberation here and now. I believe that, in order to feel joy, to love, to forgive, to conceptualize how to be free, I must first imagine that these acts and ways of existing are attainable. My imagination exists beyond the binary. It exists beyond sadness and suffering. Beyond imperial power. Above all, my work aims to ask new questions about what it means to be free, while being a mirror for Black Queer people, visualizing our beauty, divinity, and boundless new worlds that have always been ours to take up spiritual residence in.”
Zainab Aliyu
Brooklyn, New York
Zainab "Zai'' Aliyu is a Nigerian-American artist and cultural worker living in Lenapehoking (Brooklyn, NY). Her work contextualizes the cybernetic and temporal entanglement embedded within societal dynamics to understand how all socio-technological systems of control are interconnected, and how we are all materially implicated through time. She draws upon her body as a corporeal archive and site of ancestral memory to craft counter-narratives through sculpture, video, installation, built virtual environments, printed matter, archives, and community-participatory (un)learning. Zai is currently a co-director of the School for Poetic Computation, design director for the African Film Festival at the Film at Lincoln Center in NYC and a 2023-24 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow. Her work has been shown at Film at Lincoln Center (NYC), Museum of Modern Art Library (NYC), Miller ICA (Pittsburgh), the Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile (Hong Kong), Casa do Povo (São Paulo, Brazil), Aktuelle Architektur der Kulturimages (Murcia, Spain), Pocoapoco (Oaxaca, Mexico) among others.
Mariah Rigg
Weaverville, North Carolina
Mariah Rigg is a third-generation Samoan-Haole settler who grew up on the illegally-occupied island of Oʻahu. Her work has been published in Oxford American, The Cincinnati Review, Joyland, etc., and has been supported by VCCA, MASS MoCA, the Carolyn Moore Writers’ House, and Oregon Literary Arts. In 2023, Mariah's chapbook, All Hat, No Cattle, was published as part of the Inch series at Bull City Press. She holds an MFA from the University of Oregon and is a PhD candidate at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Along with being a fiction editor for TriQuarterly and a senior creative nonfiction editor for Grist, A Journal of the Arts, she is currently an editorial intern at Tin House.
Victor MARKA27 Quinonez
Brooklyn, New York
“My name is Victor "Marka27" Quiñonez and I am an artist with a rich history in graffiti, street culture, design, and activism through art. I firmly believe that design is a creative expression that is powerful, impactful, and progressive if guided by genuine purpose. For me, the "purpose" is what's most important, which is to engage with an audience in order to achieve a dialogue.
In today's climate, it is crucial to control our narratives as BIPOC by empowering each other through our respective creative process. My approach to design, whether product or graphic-driven, is similar to my process for creating art. Both start with passion, discovery, and building a narrative. My passion comes from the streets, not merely studying it but living it as well. It's a way of life.
Creating street murals, paintings, and products reflects my purpose for engaging an audience in a dialogue on cultural authenticity and awareness driven by self-expression. Through my art, I strive to bring attention to the importance of cultural identity and to promote positive societal change.”
Alida Rodrigues
London, United Kingdom
Alida Rodrigues (b.1983) is an Angolan born visual artist currently based in London. Rodrigues studied at The Slade School of Fine Art in 2007, where she received a BA in Fine Art. Since her first solo exhibition in 2014 at Trondheim Kunstmuseum in Norway, she has exhibited widely within the UK, Europe and Africa and participated in artists residencies in the UK, Mexico and the US.
Rodrigues, starred in the film Relic 3 in (2019) forms part of Relic Traveller: Phase 2, a multidisciplinary project produced by the British-Ghanaian artist Larry Achiampong. The fashion label Winnie New York who was the recipient of the Karl Lagerfeld Prize 2022, was inspired by her work to make a collection for his Men’s Spring/Summer 2023 collection which was shown during Paris fashion week 2022.
Brooklyn, New York
Born in Ecuador and based in New York, painter Mar Figueroa’s work interweaves personal memories with historical references to engage in a dialogue about the layered Latin American identities in the diaspora and to celebrate her Indigenous heritage. She received her education at the Rhode Island School of Design and, shortly after graduating, launched her art and design studio. In 2020, she was recognized by Forbes in their 30 Under 30 list in Art & Style. Most recently, she taught at RISD and is currently a faculty member at the School of Visual Arts in New York.
Cat Tyc
Hudson, New York
Cat Tyc is an interdisciplinary writer/artist who has three chapbooks, An Architectural Seance (dancing girl press & studio), CONSUMES ME (Belladonna* Collaborative) and I AM BECAUSE MY LITTLE DOG KNOWS ME (Blush Lit).
Her most recent writing has been published in Maggot Brain The Recluse, Shock of the Femme, Touch the Donkey and FENCE.
She has presented and performed at the Microscope Gallery, Anthology Film Archives, Brooklyn Museum, Hauser & Wirth, Kassel Fest and the synthesis gallery in Berlin. She has directed music videos that have been added to the rotation on LOGO’s NewNowNext and MTVu. Her first solo exhibition, SIGNIFICANT OTHERNESS, was presented at Tanja Grunert gallery in 2022.
She has been granted residencies and fellowships at Signal Culture and The Flaherty Seminar and has received support from the Foundation of Contemporary Arts. She teaches writing at the School of the Visual Arts in New York City and lives in Hudson, NY.
Jessica Doe, PhD is a multi-award winning Aniyunwiya interdisciplinary poet and artist. As a native of the occupied land of what is often referred to today as “Oregon” and a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, space, place, and de-colonization are the driving forces behind her work, which includes 15 books and several solo exhibitions. Her doctoral work addressed the meeting point of eating disorders and female poetics with an emphasis on Indigenous literature and medicine. She recently returned from India where she was a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Bengaluru and curated a poetry anthology in the colonizer’s tongue.
Her installation “The Red C[h]airn Project,” is currently on display at the Ucross Gallery in Wyoming and was one of four pieces to reopen the renovated gallery. She has upcoming exhibitions at the Walters Cultural Center (Hillsboro, Oregon) and Kala Art Gallery (Berkeley). Her poetry collection that Indigenizes the tarot deck, [sp]RED, is slated to release in 2024 by Red Planet Books.
Epiphany Couch
Portland, Oregon
Photo by: Holli Margell/Native Light Photography
Epiphany Couch is an interdisciplinary artist exploring generational knowledge, storytelling, and our connection to the metaphysical. By re-contextualizing classic mediums such as bookmaking, beadwork, photography, and collage, she presents new ways to examine our pasts, the natural world, and our ancestors. Couch’s work is unapologetically personal, drawing from family stories, her childhood experience, archival research, and her own dreams. She utilizes a multidisciplinary approach to create images and sculptural works that hold space for reflection, transforming from mere things into precious objects — intimate and heirloom-like.
Couch is spuyaləpabš (Puyallup), Yakama, and Scandinavian and grew up in caləłali (Tacoma, Washington). Her work has been shown at Carnation Contemporary in Portland OR, Gallery Ost in New York City, and Yuan Ru Gallery in Bellevue WA. In 2022 and 2023 she received the Jurors Choice Award for her work included in the Around Oregon Biennial at The Arts Center in Corvallis Oregon. She lives and works in Portland, Oregon, and is a member of Carnation Contemporary Gallery.
Ido Radon
Portland, Oregon
Ido Radon is an artist and writer whose work is fed by long-term interests in pervasive and diffuse modes of control, enclosures, the social production of reality as conditioned by the abstractions of advanced capitalism, and revolutionary or utopian impulses (experiments in living), all as mediated by various technologies. She’s made solo exhibitions at Artspeak (Vancouver, B.C), Air de Paris (Paris), Ditch Projects (Springfield, OR), Et al. (San Francisco), Jupiter Woods (London), Pied-à-terre (San Francisco), Romance (Pittsburgh), and Veronica (Seattle) and shown work at Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, RONGWRONG, the Belkin Art Gallery, and the Henry Art Gallery. She holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia. With family and friends, she makes SOCIETY.
Julia Oldham
Eugene, Oregon
Julia Oldham (b. 1979, Frederick, MD) is an artist living and working in Eugene, OR. Using a range of media, from animation to graphic storytelling, she creates narrative works that explore scientific history and speculative futures.
Oldham's work has been shown widely, including exhibits and screenings at the Queens Museum, Queens, NY; Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY; MoMA PS1 in Long Island City, NY; the Northwest Film Center at the Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR; the San Diego Art Institute, San Diego, CA; The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, IL; Oregon Contemporary, Portland, OR; and the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA.
Felipe Shibuya is a Brazilian ecologist and visual artist. His journey began when he completed his PhD in Ecology and Nature Conservation at the Federal University of Paraná. Subsequently, he chose to delve deeper into the visual aspects of his research, moving beyond just the scientific perspective. He also holds an MFA in Studio Art from the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he worked with pigmented bacteria, intending to understand how the colors they synthesize could be communication signals for humans. Being a scientist-artist enables Shibuya to explore different forms of life, from bacteria to trees, using various methods, from microbiological culture to videos. However, all of his work involves aspects of his own identity, and he always emphasizes the visuality of nature. Shibuya's unique blend of art and science has gained international recognition, exhibiting his work around the world. He also has had citations published in magazines and journals such as National Geographic, Citylab, and Ecology.
Calvin Gimpelevich
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Photo by: Cameron Day O'Connell
Calvin Gimpelevich is an essayist and fiction writer. He was a 2022 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow in Literature, the recipient of Lambda Literary's Markowitz Award, and the author of Invasions (Instar 2018), and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Fiction. His work has been recognized by Artist Trust, Jack Straw Cultural Center, 4Culture, CODEX/Writer’s Block and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts; it has appeared or is forthcoming in A Public Space, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, and The Best American Essays 2022.
In addition to writing, Calvin has long been active in queer/trans arts and community organizing. He is currently the director and host of T4T Readings, an open mic and reading series in Boston.
Rob Gibbs
Boston, Massachusetts
Photo by: G.Ortiz photography
Rob "ProBlak" Gibbs is a visual artist, organizer, and community builder from Roxbury, MA. He transforms Boston's cultural landscape, focusing on beautifying Black and Brown communities. Gibbs’ recent 5-part Breathe Life mural series has received national acclaim, most recently as the first local and Black artist to paint the coveted Dewey Square Mural on the Rose Kennedy Greenway. As co-founder of Artists for Humanity, he devoted over 30 years to teaching creative skills to youth and partnering with institutions to offer real-time opportunities for emerging artists. Gibbs has been recognized as one of Boston's most influential people and has received numerous awards, including the Boston Celtics' Hero Among Us Award and the MLK Drum Major Award. He was the first local and Black artist to paint the coveted Dewey Square Mural on the Rose Kennedy Greenway and has been an artist-in-residence with Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts and MassArt. In 2023, Gibbs was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Gibbs’ continuing practice is expansive and prolific. He envisions graffiti and hip-hop as ways to educate young people and create images of beauty and resilience through murals and contemporary fine art.
Lily Xie
Boston, Massachusetts
Lily Xie (she/they) is a Chinese-American artist and educator whose socially-engaged work explores desire, memory, and self-actualization for communities of color. In collaboration with local residents and grassroots organizers, she facilitates creative projects with a focus on public space, housing, and racial justice. The work they create together often takes shape in illustration, print media, video, and installation. Lily is currently a City of Boston Artist-in-Residence and she holds a Masters in City Planning from MIT.
Karmimadeebora McMillan
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Karmimadeebora “Mima” McMillan was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina and is based in Cambridge, MA. She has a MFA (2013) and Post Baccalaureate certificate (2011) from The School of the Museum of Arts at Tufts, Boston. McMillan’s paintings are influenced by her southern childhood. Characters from racist’s propaganda and black dolls wander through brightly colored and fragmented landscapes.
After graduate school McMillan worked for the well-known street artist Swoon for five years as her business manager and helped start her non-profit organization Heliotrope Foundation.
McMillan has also performed with her mentor Magdalena Campos-Pons at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, Queens Museum in New York, and Havana, Cuba Biennale 15. Karmimadeebora is currently the Director of the Post Baccalaureate Program and part time lecturer at SMFA at Tufts, Boston.
DaNice D. Marshall
Braintree, Massachusetts
“I am an artist who believes that people are more alike than we are different. My name is DaNice D Marshall (pronounced Duh-NYSE) I’m a born writer, who became a visual artist in 2016, after being stricken with Granulomatosis with Polyiingitis, a serious and rare disease. After 28 days in the hospital, I was sent home, unable to walk without a cane, unable to concentrate to write, and partially deaf. Doctors told me to do nothing, which I translated to mean paint. I started to paint abstracts, mostly to watch the paint dry. Eventually my work evolved to the portraiture art that I make today.
I paint portraiture art to record ordinary activities of life, and to show the viewer that we all laugh and have moments of joy. These moments are a source of light, a familiar thread, a human story that acts as a reminder that we are more alike than we are different. I hope my art makes the viewer smile just a little, at least on the inside.”
Tammi Jean Fedestin
Malden, Massachusetts
Photo Credit: Jen Vesp
Tammi Jean Fedestin (she/her) is a visual artist based in Massachusetts whose practice includes printmaking, collage, and mixed media work. Her surreal and vibrant pieces explore the beauty and humor found in what's strange, grotesque, frightful, and sometimes downright traumatic. She holds a BA in Arts Management from the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (MCLA). While in school, Tammi studied under the letterpress artist Melanie Mowinski and gained a love of bookmaking and printmaking.
As a queer Haitian woman, many expectations were thrust upon Tammi by loved ones, the education system, and society as a whole. As she shifted and changed to become the “perfect, dependable, strong black woman,” she lost her sense of self and discarded her own thoughts and feelings as incorrect. Through her work, Tammi is unveiling and becoming re-acquainted with the hidden aspects of her identity.
Tammi hopes her work will make others feel seen and understood, especially other Haitian girls who may find themselves shifting and changing for the world. She hopes that others will see her work and take on the challenge to find beauty in what they have hidden within themselves.
Sharon Amuguni
Worcester, Massachusetts
Sharon Amuguni is a poet and creator whose practice includes papier mache, fiber arts, craft, and paper arts. Her artmaking is an extension of her poetry and is often fueled by play, experimentation, and flights of fancy. She was featured in Mass Poetry’s Raining Poetry project and was an Assets for Artist Worcester Business of Art 2023 cohort member. She has an MA in Civic Media Art and Practice (Media Design) from Emerson and has worked as an arts administrator for several years. In addition to working on her own practice, she also offers grant application support and other creative practice support services to fellow artists, community organizations, and nonprofits through her sister site, sharonmakes.work.
Iris Residency Fellowship
(in partnership with the Berkshire Immigrant Center)
Marina Dominguez
Pittsfield, Massachusetts
Photo Credit: Shaw Israel Izikson, Berkshire Edge
Marina Dominguez is a photographer and art facilitator from Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her journey to the United States began seven years ago, when she arrived in the Berkshires in Western Massachusetts. Having spent her early career in the corporate world in Argentina, she acknowledged and felt deep gratitude for the Berkshire Community, a profound connection with art was sparked and an awakening and journey of self-discovery began. Being an immigrant in this country often means creating a relationship with solitude. However, embracing solitude turned out to be one of the most transformative experiences of her life. She accepted it and harnessed its power to truly delve into self-discovery. She rebuilt herself to help and encourage others to heal through art, coaching and psychology”
Marina Dominguez is founder of Katunemo Artist Collective, a group focused on arts, healing and community resources for immigrant artists.
Shailja Patel
Amherst, Massachusetts
Credit: © Marco Giugliarelli for the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, 2023
Shailja Patel (she/her) is the author of Migritude, which was a #1 Amazon poetry bestseller, Seattle Times bestseller, and shortlisted for Italy's Camaiore Prize. Taught in over 150 colleges and universities worldwide, Migritude is based on Patel's highly-acclaimed one-woman theatre show, which generated standing ovations on four continents.
Patel's poems have been translated into 17 languages. Her essays and commentaries appear in the Guardian, Le Monde Diplomatique, and Internazionale, among others. She has appeared on BBC, Al-Jazeera, and NPR. Honors include a Global Feminist Spotlight from the Nobel Women’s Initiative, a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship, a Sundance Theatre Fellowship, the Voices of Our Nations poetry award, the Fanny-Ann Eddy Poetry Award, the BrittlePaper Anniversary Award, the Nordic Africa Institute African Writer Fellowship, and the Jozi Book Fair Guest Writer Award.
Patel is a founding member of Kenyans For Peace, Truth and Justice, a civil society coalition which works for equitable democracy in Kenya. The African Women's Development Fund named her one of Fifty Inspirational African Feminists, ELLE India Magazine selected her as one of its 25 New Guard Influencers, and Poetry Africa honored her as Letters To Dennis Poet, continuing the legacy of renowned anti-apartheid activist poet Dennis Brutus. She represented Kenya at the London Cultural Olympiad's Poetry Parnassus. Her work features in the Smithsonian Museum's groundbreaking "Beyond Bollywood" exhibition.
Patel is the Public Affairs Editor for the Massachusetts Review. From 2020-2022, she was a Research Associate at Five College Women’s Studies Research Center, in Western Massachusetts.
Originally from Arecibo, Puerto Rico, Marta Pérez García was trained as a printmaker at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University, Philadelphia, where she recieved an MFA. Her artworks are in the collections of The Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico,The Library of Congress, Washington, DC and The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, among others. Pérez García has been a yearly recipient of artist fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities since 2010. She was awarded a Public Art Building Communities Grant in 2018 for I'm Gonna Get You, a large mixed-media installation on gender violence exhibited at the Reeves Center. Recently, Pérez García started to experiment with structural papermaking and was awarded the 2021 Vita Paper Arts Residency at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center in Hyattsville, Maryland. Her artwork Your Hand (2020), which was featured in the Phillips's juried invitational Inside Outside, Upside Down, in 2021, was acquired by The Phillips Collection.
Carolina Mercado Vargas
Isabela, Puerto Rico
Carolina Mercado Vargas (also Nadirr) is a Puerto Rican photographer, writer and graphic designer, currently based in Isabela, Puerto Rico.
Her work is an exploration of the intricacies of daily life, emphasizing urban experiences and the solitude that accompanies them, occasionally infused with surreal elements, Her focus revolves around crafting memory spaces and interlacing narratives. Her current interests include textile work and documenting the ongoing changes in her home island of Puerto Rico, particularly in the context of the prevailing gentrification. She has had her work exhibited in Puerto Rico, Japan and Spain.
Steve Maldonado Silvestrini
Toa Alta, Puerto Rico
Steve Maldonado Silvestrini is an artist and designer, as well as a self-taught botanist and plant taxonomist, from and based in Puerto Rico. Although his academic background is in architecture and design, he currently works on several projects and explorations that intersect the practices of art and science. He actively collaborates and supports several environmental activists & organizations, grassroots movements, and self-organized communities. Many of these collaborations have resulted in the protection of endangered species and unique natural sites in Puerto Rico. His scientific research currently focuses on agrostology, naturally occurring hybrids, phenology, and the indexing and monitoring of introduced plant species to the Caribbean. His artistic oeuvre centers on future Caribbean narratives, etymology, living systems, mutualism, natural history collections, and site-specific/time-specific explorations. His design and architectural works propose post-anthropocentric habitation, environments not centered solely on human needs, considering all living beings in an ecologically inclusive approach. He has published in Acta Científica, Forgotten Lands, Phytoneuron, and the River Rail. He has exhibited his artistic oeuvre in Hidrante (Santurce, PR), Bronx Art Space (NYC), TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes (Tenerife, Spain), and Casa Manatuabón (Manatí, PR).
Elizabeth Robles
San Juan, Puerto Rico
Photo by: Máximo Colón
Elizabeth Robles practices across media, working with sculpture, installation and performance; all within walking distance from her home.
The intimacy of her relationship with her surroundings leads her to produce an art of connections and coexistence between objects found or created, materialities, architecture and the urban and rural fabric. Her work dilates the boundaries that separate art and life, such as pulverizing stone pigments and fermenting foods, or walking and performance.
The impositions of the Board of Fiscal Control to the economic crisis in Puerto Rico and migratory movements are themes that are addressed in her current production.
Natalia Bosques Chico
Seattle, Washington
“I’m a 29 years old queer woman born & raised in Puerto Rico. Acrylic painting is my main artistic practice but I’ve also played around with different mediums, such as digital illustration, linocut printmaking, ballpoint pen drawing, among others. In 2015 I obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Painting from my hometown’s Universidad Interamericana de Puerto Rico, San German Campus. Moving back home is my main goal so I like to stay current with Puerto Rico’s art scene and participate in as many exhibitions as I can there and locally. This year (2023), some of my paintings were a part of Hayden's Ferry Review (AZ), Chichaítos 4, Barrioization (PR) and Sortaria, Fuerza Fest (NY). My illustrations are featured in Gacela del Ático, Pulpo Editorial and La Impresora's books.
Diana Dávila Casasnovas
Guaynabo, Puerto Rico
Sculptor, ceramicist, jewelry designer, draftswoman, painter and teacher. Dávila earned her BFA at The University of the Arts and a certificate in fine arts at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1985). In Puerto Rico, she continued her studies in Education at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus and took workshops in drawing, painting and ceramics with artists Bernardo Hogan, Jerry Bennett, Luis Ivorra, Ricardo Tena, Joe Carolffi, Gerda Gruber, John Balossi, Loraine de Castro, Frank Cervoni and Raúl Zayas. In 2019 she received an award to intern at the Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, Vermont, USA. She has taught at the Art Students League of San Juan, Universidad del Sagrado Corazón and at Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico. In 2017, she was accepted as a member of the International Academy of Ceramics, AIC-IAC located in Switzerland. She has shown her work in several solo and group exhibitions in Puerto Rico, United States the Dominican Republic and Spain, including the International Festival of Postmodern Ceramics of the Croatian Ceramic Association (2005). Dávila’s sculptural work is characterized by the use of ceramics, the predominance of blue and green hues and by the configuration of interconnected forms in her compositions.
Guatemala Artist Fellowship
(In partnership with La Nueva Fábrica)
Josue Castro
Guatemala City, Guatemala
During his residency at MASS MoCA, Josue will work on developing a performance that "originates from everyday circumstances and moments, which are permeated by systematic and structural violence by the process of masculinity. The main theme of the research and performance addresses the icon of the Devil as a subject of study from historical, ethical/philosophical and social contexts. The Devil catalyzes a system of questioning, reflection, rethinking, as well as expresses the conflict of the fullness of masculinity especially in an intrapersonal way from the Guatemalan context as a gay man with K'iche' Mayan roots."
University Fellowships:
(In partnership with the following universities):
Ariana Gomez (University of Texas - Austin)
Buda, Texas
Photo by: Seth Personett
Ariana Gomez is a visual artist working between image and text. Originally from Austin, Texas, she has spent the last 12 years in New York City working commercially. Recently she returned home to pursue a graduate degree from the University of Texas at Austin. This transition has become a catalyst for her most recent ruminations on the concepts of home, family, and identity.
Ariana was honored to be mentioned in Glass Tire’s Best of 2022 as a photographer to watch and has exhibited in group shows both in the US and internationally, most recently showing at the McLennon Pen Co gallery in Austin, TX as well as showing a selection of works from her series ‘Sunset Park’ at sTudio 7 in Fort Tilden for the Rockaway Artists’ Alliance. Currently she is exploring the idea of ‘home as myth’ through reflections on her parent’s relationship to land.
Leah Horowitz (Brooklyn College)
Ridgewood, New York
“My work invites viewers to engage with them and consider what is typically overlooked or rendered invisible. As a “learning disabled” young girl I would spend long periods of time in empty rooms to complete schoolwork. During this time I would fantasize about alternative realities and lives away from the present. I am no longer imagining a future outside of society; I work to depict our collective present landscapes. While making work that presents both artificial and natural qualities, my attention slips into abstract spaces in order to process emerging ecologies. As a queer artist with ADD and dyslexia, I attempt to make an alternative translation of reality that exists outside of accepted linguistic, social, and cultural norms into an empowering space.”
Tina Villadolid (Corcoran School of the Arts and Design)
Washington, D.C.
Tina Villadolid is a second-generation Filipina American. She was a museum teaching artist for 23 years, bringing the art museum into neighborhoods guerrilla style. Eventually teaching the children of former students, her work with the marginalized generations of a wealthy community threw into question her own life's relationships to predominantly white spaces. Knowing her practice had to change, she returned to graduate school to unlearn ideologies of systemic power hierarchies. Her creative practice has become a reclamation of her inheritances as a Filipina American.
Researching trails of current US policy that began with the violent conquest of the Philippines 125 years ago begs a very personal reckoning with the duality of Tina’s identity. Reclamation takes form through temporal, site-specific, installation and action-based work that she calls “ritual interventions.” As markers of resilience to generational trauma caused by Spanish, then American colonialism, they invite collective healing in public spaces. The materiality of her work includes banana leaves, rice, and cordage in reclamation of her ancestral connection to the land, while challenging imperialist regimes of value. Illumination is a key component of her regeneration of a matriarchal lineage of Filipina shamans, whether it be through natural sunlight, projection, or reflective surfaces.
Tina’s work is relevant for many who are questioning the way the United States teaches and remembers its own history. It resists systemic erasure and creates entry points for unwinding the anti-indigenous narratives we are taught. It embodies the ferocity and healing power of the fierce feminine that is her legacy.
In 2023 Tina graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in Social Practice degree from the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, George Washington University. She is the recipient of the Nashman Center Prize for Community Engagement in the Arts and Design for her ongoing project, Tracing Manila House. She also received the award for Outstanding Work in Social Practice.
Khaila Batts (City College of New York)
Arverne, New York
Khaila Batts’ work is influenced by the fluidity of memories, she blends digital collage, acetate, and painted surfaces. She creates surrealistic and chaotic scenes through color manipulation. She explores how perception pieces together incomplete and altered images. Color and emotion inform her artistic practice; together, they enable her paintings to examine the relational nature of color. Using tiny organic brushstrokes and cool shades of blue, she recontextualizes violence scenes as calming and comforting as ocean waves. Batts’s large-scale paintings are ambiguous representation of her conflicting feelings, struggles and relationships between her and her surroundings; created as a reflection of mundane, everyday life. Her interrogation of these relationships during Covid has birthed a duality, that presents the holistic experience, engulfed in both the cruelty and kindness that we all experience. Batts often draws inspiration from familiarity; she often incorporates photographs of family and her neighbor into her work, serving as vessels for connection and a recollection of the past.