AICAD Announces Fellows for 2018/19 Post-Graduate Teaching Fellowship

Olivia Fu, “Untitled”, 2017. Gouache, colored pencil and graphite on graph paper, 8.25 x 10.5 inches.

The Association of Independent Colleges of Art & Design (AICAD) is pleased to announce the four Fellows who have recently been selected to participate in a year-long, Post-Graduate Teaching Fellowship at participating AICAD institutions during the 2018/19 academic year. Additionally, six of the 2017/18 fellows will be continuing in their positions for a second year.

The Fellowship program seeks to provide professional practice opportunities to high-achieving alumni who have recently graduated from AICAD member schools, while also increasing the racial and ethnic diversity of faculty at these institutions. AICAD institutions aspire to create a climate that recognizes and values diversity as central to excellence in art and design education.

AICAD Fellowships include structured and unstructured mentoring and professional development opportunities along with direct teaching experience, health benefits, and other monetary supports.

View the announcement at Art & Education HERE!
New Fellows:

Mrinalini Aggarwal (MFA, Installation Art, 2017, San Francisco Art Institute) placed at Pratt Institute. Aggarwal is an artist and arts organizer of Indian origin working at the intersections of architecture, art and design. Her practice is an anti-disciplinary exploration of space that seeks to reconsider the ways in which urban landscapes mediate human relationships.

Christian Ruiz Berman (MFA, Painting, 2018, Rhode Island School of Design) placed at Columbus College of Art & Design. Berman was born in Mexico City in 1982. He emigrated to the USA in 1989 and grew up in New England. He completed a BA in International Relations from Duke University in 2004, a Masters in Landscape Architecture from RISD in 2010, and an MFA in Painting at RISD in 2018. Berman has lived in Costa Rica, Mexico, and Australia, and he first started painting in 2011 after working for an international public art studio for two years (Cao/Perrot Studio) and moving to Brooklyn. Berman was chosen from a pool of over 4000 applicants to participate in a small group show of young contemporary artists at Beers Gallery in London, and he will be completing a collaborative installation at Elephant Gallery in London (new space run by Griffin Gallery, Liquitex, and Elephant magazine) with a fellow MFA classmate.

Genevieve DeLeon (MFA, Painting, 2018, Cranbrook Academy of Art) placed at Minneapolis College of Art & Design. DeLeon is an artist and poet. Her drawings and paintings have been exhibited at the Tessellate Gallery, Forum Gallery at Cranbrook Academy of Art, the Washington Studio School, and the Yellow Barn Gallery. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Quarterly, Ekphrasis, and Poet Lore.

Delano Dunn (MFA, Fine Arts, 2016, School of Visual Arts) placed at School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Dunn was born in Los Angeles, California. He is a graduate of the School of Visual Arts with an MFA in Fine Arts. Through painting, mixed media, and collage, Dunn explores questions of racial identity and perception within various contexts, ranging from the personal to the political, and drawing from his experience growing up in South Central L.A. He has had solo exhibitions in New York City, Los Angeles, and Buffalo, NY, and numerous group exhibitions, including I Like The Sound of That at Artspace in New Haven, Liberty and (in)Justice for All at Project for Empty Space in Newark, NJ, The Delaware Contemporary, to name a few. His work has been reviewed in Hyperallergic and VICE Creators Project, among others. Dunn is a recipient of A Sustainable Arts Foundation Grant, the College Art Association’s Visual Arts Graduate Fellowship in 2016, the Delaware Contemporary’s Curator’s Choice Award, and SVA’s Edward Zutrau Memorial Award. In 2017 he was nominated for the prestigious United States Artists Fellowship award. Currently, he is an invited Artist in Residence at Project for Empty Space in Newark, NJ. Dunn begins his AICAD Fellowship at SAIC in Spring 2019.

Olivia Fu (MFA, Illustration, 2018, Maryland Institute College of Art) placed at Oregon College of Art & Craft. Fu is an illustrator, animator, and experimental zine maker. Much of her work addresses womanhood, identity, sexuality, and the absurdity of life. She enjoys incorporating humor and a sense of the surreal in her illustrations. Fu has served as a teaching artist with Groundswell and the New York Historical Society Museum.

Gina Gwen Palacios (MFA, Painting, 2018, Rhode Island School of Design) placed at Maryland Institute College of Art. Palacios is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily in painting, although her work at times takes on a sculptural quality due to scale and other materials explored. Gina’s background in video, web design and interactive media also informs and expands her painting practice to include some performance and video work. Born and raised in South Texas, Gina’s work drives to create space in the official American history narrative of an underrepresented geographic and cultural narrative. Gina’s work has been exhibited throughout the South and Northeast, most recently at Morgan Lehman Gallery in New York City.

Swati Piparsania (MFA, 3D Design, 2018, Cranbrook Academy of Art) placed at Pratt Institute. Piparsania is an artist and designer from India. She has worked as a material designer, product manager and developer. She works primarily with object design and creates absurd props for performances. Reoccurring themes in her practice include dysfunctional comedy, restrained movements, and narrative studies.

Continuing Fellows:

DeShawn Dumas (Dual-degree MFA in Fine Arts / MS in History of Art & Design, 2016, Pratt Institute) placed at San Francisco Art Institute. Dumas is a painter who embraces the artificiality of man-made nature so as to develop a more terrifying form of abstract materialism inspired by utopic inequality, mandatory visibility, and the catastrophes to come. Most recently, his research interests have turned to the study of fascism, defined here as a revolutionary form of right wing populism inspired by an authoritarian vision of collective rebirth that challenges capitalist political and cultural norms while establishing a strict economic and social hierarchy. Dumas is represented by Ethan Cohen New York and Long Gallery Harlem.

Victoria Jang (MFA, Ceramics, 2014, California College of the Arts) placed at Maryland Institute College of Art. Jang is a ceramic and mixed media artist. She has recevied numerous fellowships and awards, and she is represented at Patricia Sweetow Gallery.

Bukola Koiki (MFA, Applied Craft + Design, 2015, Oregon College of Art & Craft/Pacific Northwest College of Art Joint MFA) placed at Maine College of Art. Koiki is a multidisciplinary artist who was born in Nigeria and came to study art in the US as a teen. Her work has been included in group exhibitions around the country.

Juan Carlos Rodgriquez (MFA, Communications Design, 2015, Pratt Institute) placed at California College of the Arts. Rodgriquez is a queer latinx visual communicator, passionate about food, lover of gradients and anything with glitter. He is exploring visual language’s flexibility and its role in the acculturation process amongst latinx individuals.

Makia Sharp (MFA, Sculpture, 2017, Rhode Island School of Design) placed at California College of the Arts. Sharp’s work focuses on creating spaces, both physical and metaphorical, for the everyday liminal phenomena such as light and time to be experienced through the intersection of image, form, and architecture.

Latosha Stimage (MFA, Fine Arts/Interdisciplinary Studies, 2016, California College of the Arts) placed at Columbus College of Art & Design: Stimage is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work focuses on disrupting the idea of isolated meaning by using a variety of mediums to examine and reflect on the complexities/limitations inherent in language.

Preston Thompson (MFA, 2D Design, 2017, Cranbrook Academy of Art) placed at Pratt Institute: Thompson is a graphic designer from Virginia. His studio practice is encouraged by the internet, humor, exclusiveness, cultural parody, exploitation and consumerism.