Meet the 2024 USA Fellows

EJ Hill’s practice focuses largely on challenging the social aspects and systems that construct a body. He is not only interested in how bodies and subjectivities are formed, understood, and valued within different social and cultural contexts, but also how bodies and subjectivities redefine the parameters that govern which of them are allowed to exist freely.

Gabriela Muñoz and Jenea Sanchez of Fronterizx Collective began working together in 2009. Muñoz and Sanchez’s practice is rooted in their experiences as women of color who grew up in the liminal culture between México and the United States. Their projects and collaborations center movements of social justice and uplift the labor, wisdom, and contributions of women.

John Paul Morabito engages queerness, ethnicity, and the sacred through the medium of tapestry reimagined in the digital age. For Morabito, weaving is an ontological practice through which blasphemy, devotion, the incarnational spirit of Catholicism, the decadence of drag, and queer grace are bound as resonant sensibilities within their opulent tapestries.

Kelly Church uses the traditional teachings of her Anishnabe people to share her voice as a Native, woman, activist, artist, mother and culture bearer. She harvests and processes fibers from the forests that include black ash splints, basswood, birch bark, sweetgrass, white cedar bark, and quills.

Born into the Yaadaas Eagle Clan of the Kaigani Haida, TJ Young was given the Haida name Sgwaayaans. He cites his grandfather, Claude Morrison, who instructed him on how to hand–carve halibut hooks. Young creates many carvings and items for ceremonies and cultural purposes and considers it an honor to carry on the traditions of his ancestors.

Tammie Rubin’s practice considers the intrinsic power of objects and coded symbols as signifiers, wishful contraptions, and mythic relics. Rubin’s artwork delves into narratives of Black American citizenry, migration, autonomy, longing, and faith. Weaving together familial and historical narratives, mapping data, and magical thinking, her installations evoke ritual moments of physical, metaphysical, and spiritual escape.

A self-taught narrative miniaturist, and deeply informed by the African-American tradition of making something out of nothing, Karen Collins learned by trial and error. Collins also witnessed and participated in marches, sit-ins, and Black Panther community meetings and has carried this practice of activism into her adulthood. These experiences taught her about the struggle of attaining civil rights as well as the value of community, which continues to influence her creative practice.