Past
Grantees

Orlando Hernández is a choreographer, tap dancer, and theater-maker based in NYC. He has presented his work at New York Live Arts, On the Boards, Joe’s Pub, Brown University, the Judson Church, and La Casa Ruth Hernández Torres. He was a 2022-23 Fresh Tracks Artist at New York Live Arts, a 2023 Artist-in-Residence at the Center for Performance Research, and has received grants and residencies from the New England Foundation for the Arts, Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, Yaddo, the CUNY Dance Initiative, the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone, and Snug Harbor. Hernández holds a B.A. in English from Yale University. He is a member of the tap dance and music companies Music From the Sole, Subject:Matter, and Michela Marino Lerman's Love Movement. His play La Broa’ (Broad Street) premiered in 2024 at Trinity Repertory Company.

Fellowship Statement

In my current work, tap dance conspires/collides with text, devised theater, mask-work, and live music to tell stories of metamorphosis and ecstasy. In particular I have been digging into Indigenous histories of the Caribbean from my perspective in the Puerto Rican diaspora. I strive to honor my tap dance teachers and the roots of this transformative Black American art form. I believe rhythm can be a guiding force and tool for understanding power, geography, and processes of cultural formation.

Blossom Johnson is a Diné playwright, dramaturg, and screenwriter. She is Yé'ii Dine'é Táchii'nii, and her maternal grandfather is Deeshchíí'nii. She was awarded a residency with Willowtail Springs in 2021, 2022, and 2023. Additionally, she has been awarded AlterTheater Ensemble's AlterLab 2020-21, the 2022 First Peoples Fund Cultural Capital Fellowship, 2022 Netflix Animation Foundations Program Mentee, La Lengua/ AlterTheater Ensemble's Decolonization Stories Commission 2022, The Playwrights' Center 2022-2023 Jerome Fellowship, and the Minnesota State Arts Board Creative Support for Individuals for the 2023 and 2024 fiscal year. Her play, Diné Nishłį (i am a sacred being), Or A Boarding School Play, made the Kilroys 2023 Web list, and had a World Premiere with Bag&Baggage Productions and Native Theater Project. Johnson holds an MFA in Dramaturgy from Columbia University and a BA in Theatre from Arizona State University.

Fellowship Statement

I am honored to be a 2025 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, and I am excited to continue to serve my community as a storyteller. During my Fellowship I will conduct research, learn, and continue to write a new play and musical that centers Diné experiences. I want to strengthen my community by leaning into my culture, history and language. By doing this I can disrupt the dominant American Theatrical narrative that often does not highlight, engage and empower Native people and their stories. This little rez girl is full of joy, hope and possibilities. Axhéhéé (Thank you)!!

JuCoby Johnson (he/him) is a New York-based playwright, actor, and screenwriter originally from Jacksonville, FL. His plays include How It's Gon Be (Echo Theater, 2023; Underdog Theater, 2019), ...but you could've held my hand (CATCO, 2022; O'Neill NPC Summer Season, 2022), 5 (Jungle Theater, 2023; O'Neill NPC Summer Season, 2022; Seven Devils Finalist), Heritage (International Black Theater Festival, 2024); I'll Be Seeing You Again (Jungle Serial Audio Series, 2021) and Revelations (Playing On Air, 2021). He is the recipient of the 2020 McKnight Fellowship, was a member of the 2022 Sony Pictures Television Diverse Writers Program, and a member of the inaugural Artist Cohort at The Jungle Theater. Johnson has been seen onstage at The Guthrie Theater, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, The Jungle Theater, Theater Latté Da, Theater Mu, Ten Thousand Things Theatre Company, and many more. He is currently participating in The Juilliard School’s Lila Acheson Wallace Playwrights Program.

Fellowship Statement

I write poetic, lyrical, magical love stories centered around Black people and Black communities. I try to conjure the people I grew up with, people who never imagined they would see themselves in a play, and make their existence as beautiful, as epic, and as complex as any piece of Shakespeare or Greek literature. I'm particularly fascinated by complicated relationships and by the struggle to figure out how to love each other better. My greatest dream is that a young Black person sees my work and feels seen, heard, and less alone in the world.

Kengchakaj Kengkarnka is a Thai diaspora, Bangkok-born, Lenapehoking-based artist, pianist, improviser, and synthesist. His practice engages with composing and improvising sounds from personal experience that draw inspiration from ancestral soundscapes, knowledge, and modes of collaboration and expression rooted in Southeast Asian tradition and lineage. His medium of expression spans acoustic piano, electronics, Southeast Asian retune analog synthesizer, multichannel spatial audio, and live coding—a practice of writing and executing code in real-time—utilizing technologies to produce a multisensory live performance. Kengkarnka is a Manhattan School of Music (MM) graduate, a Fulbright Scholarship recipient, and a Gold Award Lumen Prize winner. He is a Collider Fellow and a Y11 NEW INC member. His projects have received development funds and support from the Lincoln Center, NEW INC, Queens Council on the Arts, City Artist Corps, Rhizome, Processing Foundation, CultureHub, Babycastles, Eyebeam, and Institute for Electronic Arts. He is one-half of elekhlekha อีเหละเขละขละ, a collaborative duo with interdisciplinary media artist, Nitcha Tothong.

Fellowship Statement

With the Fellowship, I plan to travel through Southeast Asia to learn from elders, teachers, and traditional practitioners while continuing my study with Kru Amp, a Thai traditional music practitioner in the U.S. When researching Southeast Asia's diverse sound cultures, I often encounter a challenging political landscape marked by the historical silencing of sound cultures and activists’ voices. Through my work, I aspire to honor these stories and foster a deeper understanding of these critical issues, ensuring that the unheard voices of the past and present resonate in our collective future. I’m also committed to continuing the work of decolonizing my approach by unlearning and relearning through meaningful research in my artistic practice. This involves investigating recent and ancient history, actively listening, and reinterpreting wisdom, practices, and systems offered by ancestral and heritage: to hack contemporary tools, foster experimentation, and explore alternative futures rooted in care.

Mo Kong is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher currently residing in NYC. Their work usually takes the form of large-scale installations involving scientific research and multiple journalistic perspectives. Kong challenges key issues of the day using complex narratives that bring together the past and the present. They have had solo exhibitions at Queens Museum, Smack Mellon, CUE Art Foundation, Cuchifritos Gallery, Artericambi Gallery (Verona), and Gertrude Gallery. They also received fellowships and residencies from Sharpe Walentas, Macdowell Colony, Skowhegan, Triangle Art Association, The Drawing Center, City Artists Crops Grant, Mass MoCA Studio, Vermont Studio Center, Lighthouse Works, and Artists Alliance LES Studio Program. Kong’s work has been written about in Hyperallergic, Artforum, Art in America, Cultured magazine, Artnet, Bomb magazine, Artpapers, CoBo Social, Wall Street International, SFMoMA Public Knowledge, and more. They received an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design.

Fellowship Statement

My work reflects my long-standing interest in the natural sciences, uses a self-research process, and accounts for our position in complex historical and social events. The focus of my work revolves around "Slowbalization"—the opposite of globalization—which is characterized by xenophobia, economic isolation, and environmental collapse. The work explores the effects of these phenomena on the daily life of immigrants. I plan to continue working on my current series called Personal Ark®, which envisions this Asian immigrant-owned survival company and showcases the brand's apocalypse survival technology through site-specific installations. The series combines historical research, architecture, performance, cutting-edge technology, and biomaterials to reimagine Asian futurism and Asian pessimism. Through the lens of technological orientalism and olfactory orientalism, my works aims to help the Asian diaspora to navigate and survive the apocalypse.

Charmaine Lee (b. 1991) is an Australian composer and vocalist based in New York City. Using the voice, feedback, and live processing, Lee’s practice is primarily concerned with risk-taking, playfulness, and improvisation. As a composer, Lee has been commissioned by leading institutions including Kronos Quartet and International Contemporary Ensemble. She is an Emergent Ventures winner (2024), an Artist-in-Residence at ISSUE Project Room (2019), and a Van Lier Fellow at Roulette (2021). Her long-standing collaborators include Conrad Tao and Ikue Mori (MacArthur Fellow). Lee frequently guest lectures on building a personal language and creative agency at undergraduate and graduate-level composition programs around the country. She serves on the Artistic Advisory Council of ISSUE Project Room and runs a record label, Kou Records, dedicated to pioneering artists in music and sound.

Fellowship Statement

During the Fellowship, I plan to hone my technical and conceptual approaches to the voice, body, and technology while exploring my use of feedback, recording techniques, and thematic ideas for film and other mediums. Inspired by Foley artists, I am developing a “cinema in sound” concept using a variety of compositional techniques to create new temporal and sonic textures. This exploration will be documented in a series of self-released projects under my new label, Kou Records. My goal is to activate a productive creative community through new relationships with artists, illustrators, engineers, and distributors. In addition, I will continue to expand my live practice, including embarking on a 50-state self-organized tour around the U.S. in the fall of 2025.

Nancy Ma is a first-generation performer, playwright, and filmmaker from Chinatown, New York City. Her solo show, Home, premiered with The Latino Theater Company in Los Angeles, and has been performed at schools and festivals around the country. She has worked with Pan Asian Repertory Theater, Ojai Playwrights, and UTR/The Public, and been awarded residencies with The National Arts Club, The New Harmony Project, The Museum of Chinese in America, and Fresh Ground Pepper. Most recently, her short documentary 有一天你不在 One Day You are Not Here, wrapped the festival circuit. Ma is also the co-founder of Max2 Film Festival, a two-minute film festival focused on experimentation and community. She has taught with The Brooklyn Arts Council, Young Storytellers and Built4Collapse, and currently facilitates storytelling workshops with The Moth.

Fellowship Statement

My work is inspired by my identity as a first generation Asian American woman who was raised in a working class immigrant environment. This means processing a lot of buried feelings, doing the most to prove being female is enough, and laughing and crying loud enough to make up for the silence and survival in my family. I explore what home feels like, and that often means I revisit painful and unprocessed memories of people and places. I am currently working on Sweatshop Melody, a musical that follows a group of immigrant women who work at a garment factory; and This Body was Made for Bleeding, an experimental multimedia multilingual theater piece about the blessings and burdens of the female body. I aspire to make spaces that facilitate collective healing and difficult conversations.

Liana Mack (she/hers) is a writer, born and raised in the Bronx, New York. Her poetry and erotica has been published in Hobart, Hunger Mountain Review, Sarka, Triangle House Review, Dream Boy Book Club, dirt child, and more. She is a former lifestyle writer at The Cut (New York Magazine) and Heroine (Grailed). Her research and writing on the plaçage system has been recognized by the Edith Wharton/Straw Dog Writer’s Residency at The Mount in Lennox, MA and Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, FL. Mack has also been supported extensively in her writing by international residencies including Arteles (Hämeenkyrö, Finland), Metropolitan Fukujusou (Kyoto, Japan), and Gullkistan (Laurgvatn, Iceland). She is of Black, Wesort, and Swedish descent. Mack has a BS in Visual Art from the School of Art + Design at Purchase College and studied writing under Elaine Kahn, Eileen Myles, and Cynthia Cruz.

Fellowship Statement

I write sexy, slippery fairytales starring the subtle magic and actual monsters that menace real life. My work warps the boundaries of arousal and disgust, hunger and gluttony, romance and obscenity. It’s escapist, but never without consequences. It’s trashy and awake. It’s rancid, lush, and shameless. The next several years will be an especially antagonistic time to be a woman writing openly about sex, power, and sickness, which makes holding the line all the more urgent. I am so beyond honored to be supported by this Fellowship as I generate new work.

Aurora Masum-Javed is a poet and educator. A former public school teacher, she received an MFA in Poetry from Cornell. A recent Philip Roth Resident and Hub City Writer in Residence, she has received fellowships from places such as Tin House, MacDowell, Millay Arts, and others. Her work can be found in various journals, including Nimrod, Black Warrior Review, Aster(ix), Winter Tangerine, Frontier, Jaggery, and Callaloo. Masum-Javed was a 2023–24 Loft Mentor Series Fellow and 2024 Civitella Ranieri Writing Fellow. She has also received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Millay Colony, Caldera Arts, Hub City, Vermont Studio. She currently resides in Minnesota where she teaches at Macalester College and is finishing her first book.

Fellowship Statement

I am drafting and redrafting my first collection of poems, which at its heart questions: What does it mean to daughter? Each poem enters the question through a different door, untangling it through a new form. I've found that every door leads to another, and that the relationship and power systems within a home often mirror those of society. Perhaps the repair work of a family can reflect something back to us about transforming society. During the Fellowship, I will work on my second book, still a seedling. This new work will be a speculative, epistolary novel in verse—involving letters between a prophetic great-grandmother and her grandchild, both living on the same commune generations apart.

Jeffrey Meris (b. 1991, Haiti, raised in the Bahamas) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice engages with the relationship between materiality and larger cultural and social phenomena. He has exhibited at François Ghebaly, Los Angeles (2025); Williams College Museum of Art, Massachusetts (2024); MoMA PS1, New York (2023); Amon Carter Museum, Texas (2023); Lehmann Maupin, New York (2022); White Columns, New York (2021); and the National Art Gallery of the Bahamas,and Mestre Projects, in Nassau, Bahamas (2012, 2021). Meris is a Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture alum (2019); a NXTHVN Studio Fellow, New Haven (2020); and a Studio Museum in Harlem A.I.R 2022-2023. Always Jeffrey never “Jeff.” He earned his AA in arts and crafts from the University of the Bahamas in 2012, a BFA in sculpture from the Tyler School of Art in 2015, and an MFA in visual arts from Columbia University in 2019.

Fellowship Statement

In my practice, I oscillate between the embodied trauma of the colonial project in my kinetic sculptures to utilizing restorative strategies in my sculptures, paintings, and installations. What would healing centuries of xenophobia, queerphobia, and other oppressive systems look like? My destiny is in search of sanctuary; I believe that the future is Black. I use symbols of trauma and transform them into beacons of hope and prosperity. During the Fellowship, I plan to advance my studio practice and create more sustainable structures for my practice.

Photo by Will Pippin, Cultured Mag.

Asif Mian uses video, installation, performance, and sculpture to investigate the tenuous connections between the events that shape one’s life. He has held solo exhibitions at Management and Crush Curatorial in New York City and Fjord Gallery in Philadelphia, and has participated in group exhibitions at Okayama Art Summit, the Whitney ISP, The Shed, Queens Museum, and BRIC, among others. Mian is a Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist awardee and has been featured in ArtForum, Artnet, Art Observer, and The Dallas News. He was awarded the Queens Museum-Jerome Foundation Fellowship, where his multi-chapter project, RAF, was the focus of a 2021 solo exhibition. His work breaks down and rearranges mediums to evoke a liminal psychological space, where the “ghosts” of events and the mental processing of violence reside. He graduated from Drew University with a BA Biology and BA Studio Art; earned an MFA Visual Arts from Columbia University; and is a Skowhegan alum.

Fellowship Statement

In my multichapter RAF project, I am drawing from personal and familial experiences of violent crime, alongside structures of criminality and policing, to articulate how these forces have shaped facets of American culture. I am developing a video work, Qareen, that will combine forensic documentary, character performance, and thermal infrared videography. I am also developing sand sculptures and wall reliefs by ‘possessing’ sand through catalytic and bonding techniques. Sand can flow like water, solidify like stone, melt into glass, and alchemize into mirror. Its sensorial traits are essential in engaging conscious and subconscious explorations of emotional processing. By merging classic art therapy methods with my own practice of experimental sculpture and performance, I would like to explore how the effects of violence, trauma, and therapy can be reinterpreted through innovative art practices.

Taylor Ngiri Seaberg (they/them) is a Black, bi-polar, gender non-binary composer, multi-instrumentalist, photographer, and organizer based in South Minneapolis, Minnesota with artistic communities in Chicago and Mexico City. Born in Kusel, Germany, migrating to the southeast coast in Norfolk, Virginia, and settling with family in Minnesota, Ngiri was introduced to different music styles in their formative years. Their main love is the bass guitar. They go by the tongue-in-cheek artist moniker, “Manic Pixie Dream Boi” to highlight representation of bi-polar disorder within the Black queer community. Ngiri was awarded a Minnesota State Arts Board (MSAB) 2019 Cultural Community Partnership grant for an artist networking series called Artist Feast. They were awarded a Foundation for Contemporary Arts (FCA) grant and Red Bull Arts grant for their protest photography around the Uprising in the Twin Cities in 2020 and a 2021 Metropolitan Regional Arts Council’s Next Step Fund. They also performed in an artist residency, The Playground Experience, curated by 2021-2023 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, Vie Boheme, in partnership with Public Functionary.

Fellowship Statement

Ngiri's work lies at the intersections of protest work (with photography and songwriting focusing on the Black experience) and breaking the mental health stigma, having been diagnosed with Bi-polar type 1 from a young age. They play bass and electric guitar, piano and flute, all of which they self-record and self-produce.

During the fellowship period, Ngiri aims to highlight the intersections of bi-polar disorder and artmaking, specifically with their self-produced (albeit slightly manic) album—a kaleidoscope of diverse beats called Manic Pixie Dream Boi, the queer tongue-in-cheek moniker that is also their artist name.

Alys Ayumi Ogura (オグラ アリス ア有美)(she/her) is a dance performance-maker, storyteller, dancer, and through her movements, voice, and quirky humor. A Twin Cities-based native of Japan, Ogura has been developing her own work since 2015. Ogura started her dancing with two mentors: the late Mika Kurosawa and Rob Scoggins, who each offered unconditional encouragement. She has worked with more than 40 artists—near and far—including Hauser Dance, Emily Johnson/Catalyst, ASDC, Emily Gastineau, Sandrine Harris, Kata Juhasz, Pam Gleason, Pramila Vasudevan, and Laurie Van Wieren. Ogura has created more than 20 works performed in various U.S. venues, including the Walker Art Center and Southern Theater. Recognition highlights include: Arts Organizing Institute (2017-18), Naked Stages (2021) Fellowships, An Isolated Act commission at the Red Eye Theater’s New Works 4 Festival (2023), and Keshet Makers Space Experience Residency (2024). Ogura is also a steering-committee member for DanceMN.

Fellowship Statement

When I develop and perform my work, I want to challenge the audience's acceptance of ambiguity by flipping the power dynamic and centering on my mother tongue, and Japanese views and values. My thematic foci and social concerns focus on my identity as an Asian woman who speaks English with a Japanese accent.  I wonder how I can offer my audiences—particularly those with different cultural frameworks for navigating the world—a glimpse of my worldview. This is the question I want to continue pursuing, to provide a safer, more enjoyable, and perhaps even transformative experience for my audiences. I want to use my voice to give a platform to those who have similarly marginalized voices. Rather than appropriating others’ voices, I will be a good ally and amplify their voices through my own creative work. This is a challenging, but worthwhile endeavor I am eager to continue exploring.

sadé powell is a concrete poet from New York City, exploring the sonic, kinesthetic, and linguistic possibilities of her 1930s Royal typewriter. Rooted in Black feminist poethics and inspired by the gritty spirit of her upbringing, she examines the dissemblant vernacularity of what is colloquially considered “the hood." Through experimental print and paper techniques, powell critiques grammar and mucks up orthography. Her work has been supported by the Whitney Independent Study Program, The Poetry Project, The Center for Book Arts, Hand Papermaking Magazine, Triple Canopy, and KOLAJ Magazine, among others. In 2023, she published chapbooks periodluv with Belladonna Collaborative and wordtomydead with Ugly Duckling Presse. Her debut collection, dontbeabitterbtch, is forthcoming with selva oscura press. She holds a BA in Cultural Anthropology from San Francisco State University and an MA in Performance Studies from NYU Tisch, and serves on the editorial collective for Women & Performance Journal.

Fellowship Statement

i approach this Fellowship as an opening—a field of possibility where i can situate the mundanity of divestment and its otherwise. my practice, rooted in concrete poetry and the generative dissemblance of illegibility, engages with themes of vernacularity and the unknown. these modes disentangle normative frameworks that demand performance and understanding, carving space for the grit and blur undergirding fugitive aesthetics. through ephemeral installations and experiments with scale, form, and papermaking, i aspire to render Black abstraction as relational and deeply social, embedding it as a ubiquitous storytelling presence across the boroughs. 

* intentional use of lowercase

Mary Prescott is a Thai-American interdisciplinary artist, composer, and pianist who explores the foundations and facets of identity and social conditions through experiential performance. Her output includes several large-scale interdisciplinary works involving music, theater, film, word, and movement; as well as improvised music, opera, sound journaling, film music, solo, and chamber concert works. Prescott is an awardee of the McKnight Composer Fellowship, the Princess Grace Award, NPN Creation and Development Fund, a New Music USA Grant, and many more. Her recent residencies include Loghaven, Camargo, VCCA, and Lanesboro Arts. Prescott holds piano performance degrees from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and Manhattan School of Music and is a Steinway Artist.

Fellowship Statement

Responding to my own encounters with marginalization, I create embodied work that draws critical attention toward social imbalances. By illuminating invisible stories, recovering lost and forgotten identities, and untangling systemic impacts of social and cultural structures, my work gives voice and brings awareness to underrepresented communities and subject matter, focusing on Asian-Americans, women, and mothers. I connect to audiences with searching, mysterious, and evocative performances that activate empathy and responsibility, and ultimately initiate social change and justice. During my Jerome Fellowship, I will develop Ancestral Table, a shared meal and interdisciplinary performance, including music, word, movement, and film, that examines the relationships between ecology, migration, cultural inheritance, and maternal legacy through my Thai mother’s family recipes. This work furthers my explorations of Asian mythologies, folklore and Futurism.

Ella Josephine Julia (Cleo) Moore is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice uses participatory art, music composition, instrument-making, bandleading, installation, and fabric arts. Under the alias Cleo Reed, they complete musical projects that are rooted in their ancestral and cultural lineage. Their debut album project, Root Cause was released in 2023 and alongside the work they premiered a self-directed performance art piece titled Black American Circus at AFROPUNK Festival, Banlieues Bleues in Paris, and Brooklyn Museum. Reed is a recipient of the 2024 Map Fund. Reed is currently a resident at Abrons Arts Center’s AIRspace Performance Residency through 2026, and a 2025 Session Resident for Recess Arts. Recently, they developed software instruments for Jon Batiste’s American Symphony at Carnegie Hall.

Fellowship Statement

Whether underground or academic, experimental or popular, I am drawn to question the notion of tradition, to dissolve the binary, make noise, and push the barrier between artist and audience. My goal is to catalyze conversation and challenge notions of tradition and identity, dissolving the barriers between artists and audience. During the Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, I intend to create work focused on expanding musical works into more multidisciplinary and socially-engaged projects. I work toward a future that enables me to realize intentional creative endeavors and encourage joy within collaborative spaces such as museums, theaters, and unseen spaces. 

Mohammed Sheikh is a self-taught filmmaker, director, and cinematographer dedicated to capturing the unique narratives of Somalis. His filmmaking journey began unexpectedly in the Kebribeyah refugee camp in Eastern Ethiopia. There, his mother’s storytelling and audio tapes kindled a passion in him for storytelling and film. Through films like The Forgotten Ones and Balwo, he sheds light on the resilience, culture, and experiences of his community, aiming to foster understanding and preserve Somali stories. His work is a blend of authenticity and visual impact, celebrating the depth of Somali life. His short narrative films The Forgotten Ones and Luul have received recognition on platforms like CBS, Sahan Journal, and MPR News. Sheikh received a grant from the 2023 Jerome Foundation MN Film Production program.

Fellowship Statement

I aspire to tell authentic Somali stories that amplify community voices and challenge stereotypes. By adding dreamlike visuals and symbolic imagery, I want to bring fresh perspectives to my work and spark important conversations. During the Fellowship, I plan to focus on improving my craft, sharing my films at festivals, and connecting with a wider audience. I’m working to share my documentary The Forgotten Ones, which highlights the opioid crisis in the Somali community. This opportunity will allow me to dedicate myself fully to my artistic journey and make a meaningful impact through my storytelling. I’m currently working on my first feature film, Barni, about three friends searching for a missing girl in a Somali village and developing a new project about family and displacement.

ms. z tye is a Brooklyn-based artist who is interested in physical investigations, including but not limited to movement, voice, sculpture, and theater. tye explores concepts through ancestral praise. She is intrigued with somatic relations and how they associate with emotional connectivity. She has been included in exhibitions with Bronx Museum of Arts, Volta/Armory Art Fair, Swivel Gallery, Untitled Art Fair, Cierra Britton Gallery, The Living Gallery, Long Gallery Harlem, Jenkins Johnson Gallery, Postmasters Gallery, Fridman Gallery, Art in Buildings, and Participant INC. Choreographic work has been commissioned by The Kitchen, BMW, The Shed, Danspace, Lotto Royale, MQBMBQ, BOFFO, Jack, Gibney, Movement Research, and Dance Canvas ATL.

Fellowship Statement

My work recognizes that with any act of public sharing lies precarity. In this space of vulnerability and perilousness, I hope to bring forth softness in the gaze of spectators through nostalgic imagery designed to spark dialogue and raise consciousness. Rooted in memory, my work reclaims rituals from the Pentecostal church as ceremonial acts. My reclamation rituals invite audiences to question phrases such as,  “Come as you are” and, “The land of the free.” These prompts are not uplifiting for queer and trans folx like myself, which is revealed through the audience responses. My practice embraces attributes of faith, spirit, and the performance of patriotism to ritualize clarity and redemption for me and my community.

* intentional use of lowercase

Ogemdi Ude is a dance and interdisciplinary artist and educator based in Brooklyn. Her performance work focuses on Black femme legacies and futures, grief, and memory. Her work has been presented at The Kitchen, Gibney, Harlem Stage, Danspace Project, Abrons Arts Center, BRIC, ISSUE Project Room, Recess Art, Center for Performance Research, and for BAM's DanceAfrica festival. She is a 2024/2025 BAX Artist-in-Residence. Ude has been a 2022-2024 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence, 2021 danceWEB Scholar, 2021 Laundromat Project Create Change Artist-in-Residence, and a 2019-2020 Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU Resident Fellow. In January 2022, she appeared on the cover of Dance Magazine for their annual “25 to Watch” issue. Most recently, she has published a book, Watch Me, in a collection edited by Thomas DeFrantz and Annie-B Parson: Dance History(s): Imagination as a Form of Study published by Dancing Foxes Press and Wesleyan University Press.

Fellowship Statement

During the Fellowship I will further my investigations into Black mourning and memory through two practices. The first is an improvisation practice I call: “forgotten body.” Forgotten body asks: Can I talk back to the dead? Can I befriend grief? Can my relationships to what I have lost grow stronger in the wake of loss? Forgotten body asks you to move sensitively not sensibly, encouraging your subconscious to lead. It is built on an anticolonial approach that strengthens our connections to Black ancestry and embodied history. The second is a performance/archival project: Major. In Major, a team of Black Southern femmes embody the movement of our girlhood to answer the questions of our present. Major follows the intimate journey of returning to a body you think is lost. How can you reorganize your body to dance in the ways you were born to, but have been trained out of?

Amy Usdin weaves onto worn nets, sculpting work that speaks to loss, longing, and the dissonance of nostalgia. With a BFA in Graphic Communications from Washington University, St. Louis, she began her current practice in 2018. She has exhibited throughout the United States and in Australia in surveys representing the diversity and breadth of contemporary craft and fiber art. In 2025, she will open solo shows at Lawton Gallery in Green Bay, WI and the Appalachian Center for Craft in Smithville, TN. Usdin has held residencies with Hafnarfjörður Centre of Culture and Fine Art, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, the Miller Art Museum, and Praxis Fiber Workshop. She has received past support from the Minnesota State Arts Board and the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council. Usdin  is a 2024 Stone and DeGuire Contemporary Art Award recipient and a 2024/25 MCAD–Jerome Foundation Fellow.

Fellowship Statement

I needle-weave abstract physical and psychological landscapes onto aging fiber artifacts—most often fly nets for horses and fishing nets. As I recontextualize these materials of trade into critical and aesthetic space, the transformation creates new narratives that honor the revolving intersections of past and present. The ragged nets act as empathic objects, offering a point of connection and shared humanity. I am increasingly interested in the correlation between bodies of land and water and bodies of flesh and blood—the trauma they endure, what is inevitable versus imposed; weaving fills a need to document these scars aesthetically. Throughout the Fellowship years, this slight conceptual shift will find expression through net sculptures as well as loom-woven work that sits in conversation with them.