Past
Grantees

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.

Oanh Vu (she/her) is a puppeteer, educator, and community organizer. As a second-generation Vietnamese American, she employs humor and the playful art of puppetry to weave narratives centered on healing and social change for her communities. Her latest puppet show, Phantom Loss, follows a cast of multi-generational Vietnamese characters as they navigate the legacies of war and what healing can look like in the wake of historical violence. Oanh has been recognized with grants from the Jim Henson Foundation in 2023 and 2024. She began her puppetry journey with Monkeybear’s Harmolodic Workshop and served as a 2024 Maker Series Artist in Residence at Pillsbury House Theatre. Her work has reached audiences at various venues across the Twin Cities, including In the Heart of the Beast Theatre, Minnesota Opera, the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia), the Playwrights' Center, and Theater Mu.

Fellowship Statement

I hope to use this Fellowship to support the creation of my next puppet show, which will delve into the impacts of labor and capitalism on Asian Americans, whose value is often measured by their productivity. These damaging perceptions contribute to wage inequality and lead to issues such as overextension and burnout.

Additionally, I am excited about using this Fellowship to better balance my role as an artist with my work as an educator, and community organizer. I wrestle with how to effect tangible changes in people's material conditions. This is a question I am actively exploring and look forward to unpacking further. I find that narrative is a powerful tool to shape our understanding of the world and thus a way to create political change. The puppetry field in America is sorely lacking BIPOC artists, so many of our stories are missing from this artform, despite puppetry having historical global roots. As a Vietnamese American I want to continue creating shows that are unapologetically Vietnamese but generally accessible to non-Vietnamese people.

A. E. Wynter is a Black, Jamaican-descended writer, editor, and curator living in Saint Paul, MN. She has received multiple grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board and has organized various events throughout the Twin Cities, including readings, writing workshops, and multimedia art exhibits. Wynter was a fiction fellow in the 2021-2022 Loft Mentor Series and a 2023 resident at the Carolyn Moore Writers Residency. Her poems have appeared in Torch Literary Arts, West Trade Review, Water~Stone Review, and elsewhere. Wynter received The Florida Review 2024 Editors’ Award in Poetry, the 53rd New Millennium Award for Poetry, and was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Fellowship Statement

As a writer, I explore many themes: family and womanhood, home and spirituality, memory and language, ghosts and genetic inheritance, the dissonance between being Black and American. Recently, I have begun to examine these themes through the lens of the body, or rather, body translation—interrogating emotional, spiritual, and physical scars to create a conversation in which the body talks back. Is body memory our most reliable record keeper? How does a body housing fractured histories become whole? Throughout the Fellowship, I will work on in-progress poetry collections and continue to experiment with existing and (re)imagined forms, finding ways of “bodying” the poem to process personal and communal histories. The goal is to create another language in which to understand the world, the self, and the unseen.

Bren Wyona is a filmmaker born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and raised in Southern California. Through hybrid narrative and documentary media, their work explores shifting class landscapes, identity loss, and communal recovery. Wyona’s latest short film, that with which ringing is done, held above, in place—supported by Untitled Filmmaker Organization (UFO) and Zeiss—is a dynamic road trip documentary that investigates her own Diné ancestors and the Indian Child Welfare Act through the stronghold lens of Cowboy and Indian cinema. Wyona is a 2021 Flaherty Fellow, a 2021 Oolite Arts Grant Recipient, and a 2023-2025 Artist-in-Residence at the Brooklyn Academy of Music through a fellowship with the UFO Short Film Lab. They are currently in development for their first feature film, a narrative set in New Mexico and Ireland.

Fellowship Statement

I’d like to continue making films that center the unlearning of fast-gratifying plot trauma. My current projects include a short documentary featuring Indigenous drag queens, Meteorite Shepherds, a narrative about two shepherds from New Mexico and Ireland, and Camping a hybrid road trip film following a group of queer Indigenous legends living in Los Angeles. This Fellowship will be crucial in allowing me resources and time to evolve into long-form practices. As I begin to develop my first feature films, I want to ensure that these practices are in collaboration with Diné elders including group therapies, cast and crew education, and mechanical processes like film development with foraged plant materials. The industry is in dire need of intentional film sets that fight for land protection, collaborative labor, and honorable images.

Or Zubalsky is an artist exploring overlaps between trauma, memory, transformation, and healing. They were previously a resident at Pioneer Works (2023), NEW INC incubator member (2023), and C/Change R&D Lab fellow (2023). Zubalsky’s work has been supported by The New Museum, The Museum of Art and Design, Queens Museum of Art, Rhizome, Eyebeam, Culture Push, Brooklyn Arts Council, and Art Matters, among others. They been developing a trauma-informed approach to making and relating to art through practicing, teaching, peer learning, and organizing. They have made video, performance, and software-based work that unpacks how memory operates, specifically in relation to settler colonialism. Since becoming a parent, Zubalsky has been exploring the inner workings of memory in relation to post-trauma and gender. They live in Lenapehoking (Brooklyn) with their partner and child.

Fellowship Statement

The main subject in my work is the gap in fragmented post-traumatic memory. It is a space of absence and disconnection as well as an opening through which resonance can be felt. In the past years, I made work that recognized the existence of the gap and explored some of its characteristics. Now, I am ready to make work from within it. My experience of post-trauma is such that the mysterious operations of memory can be both terrifying and precious. To aspire to make work from within the gap is to seek an opportunity to channel lightness and ease in response to oppression and harm. Having the support to sustain my practice for three years will help me grow into this work. This support will allow me to move at the rhythms that my body will allow, develop a new visual vocabulary, and document the beauty in the interwoven processes of healing and transition.