AICAD
236 Hope street
Providence, RI 02906
The Association of Independent Colleges of Art & Design (AICAD) is pleased to announce the five fellows who have recently been selected to participate in a year-long, Post-Graduate Teaching Fellowship at participating AICAD institutions during the 2016/17 academic year. Additionally, three of the 2015/16 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.
Newly selected fellows:
Ebitenyefa Baralaye (MFA in Ceramics, 2016, Cranbrook Academy of Art) placed at San Francisco Art Institute. Ebitenyefa is a sculptor and designer. With a history spanning Nigeria, the Caribbean and the United States, his work abstracts conditions of desire and identity around themes of spirituality, ethnicity, utility and personal narrative. His work has been in various domestic and international exhibitions including the 2011 Gyeonggi International Ceramix Biennale and the 2015 Architectural Digest Home Design Show. He is currently represented by David Klein Gallery in Detroit.
Jaleesa Johnston (MFA Studio Art, 2016, San Francisco Art Institute), placed at Pacific Northwest College of Art. Jaleesa is a mixed media artist born and raised in the Bay Area, California. Her work explores the black female body as both subject and material through performance, video, photography, sculpture and collage. Jaleesa’s work interrogates the defining power of the gaze and its relationship to the formation and destruction of the psychology of blackness.
Michael R. León (MFA in Painting, 2015, Rhode Island School of Design) placed at School of the Art Institute of Chicago. León lives and works in Los Angeles, California. His artwork is based in the history of painting and drawing tradition. León is interested in creating disjunctive narratives using mythology and personal stories that focus on the dysfunctional harmony between the beauty and brutality of the everyday. His most recent endeavor, along with his friend and colleague Roque Montez, is their artist run gallery Leon Montez that focuses on representing emerging artists.
Paul Rouphail (MFA in Painting, 2016, Rhode Island School of Design) placed at Maryland Institute College of Art. Paul is a painter from Raleigh, North Carolina. His work fuses architectural history, American vernacular, and turns of phrase. His layered paintings examine slippages in textual translation where particular colloquialisms merge with everyday environments. Text, emoticons, and advertisement graphics populate domestic interiors and high-rise facades, storefront windows and digitally synthesized landscapes.
Ziyang Wu (MFA in Painting, 2016, Rhode Island School of Design) placed at Minneapolis College of Art & Design. Wu is originally from Xuzhou, Jiangsu, China. Wu received his BFA from the Florence Academy of Fine Art in Italy. Since then his art practice has been focused on what Henri LeFebvre termed micro-alienation within contemporary Chinese society through a combination of video, painting, installation and performance. Wu has shown his work internationally in China, USA, and Europe including exhibitions at the Milan Design Week, at the Medici Palace, and at the Academy Art Museum in Maryland. This past year he was invited by the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation to gather archival materials from his exhibitions and art events in China during the 1980s.
Continuing fellows:
Shiraz Gallab (MFA in 2D Design, 2015, Cranbrook Academy of Art) placed at California College of the Arts for a second consecutive year. Shiraz is a graphic designer who was born, but not raised in Khartoum, Sudan. Her work investigates language, form and the human condition, and her practice combines experimental and commercial threads. Shiraz is a contributor for Women of Graphic Design and her work has been published in Graphic Design: The New Basics, Ficciones Typografika, re:Form and AIGA’s Eye on Design.
“CCA has been incredibly supportive of my development. I have had the opportunity to teach in both the graduate and undergraduate departments and work with students on projects that range from typographic posters, to time-based narratives, to original pieces of writing. Teaching at CCA has helped me better understand who I am as a graphic designer and educator—what my strengths are, where I see myself in the future, and how I can most effectively reach my students. I am humbled to have been offered a second year.”
Helina Metaferia (MFA 2015, Tufts University/School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) is placed at San Francisco Art Institute for a second consecutive year. Helina is an interdisciplinary artist working in performance, video art, installation, and mark-making. As a first generation Ethiopian American, Helina’s work has been informed by an interest in diaspora, transnationalism, and gender studies. She is a 2016 participant of the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, and will be teaching in the New Genres department of SFAI during the second year of her AICAD Fellowship in the fall.
“It’s been a great pleasure to participate in the San Francisco Art Institute’s community as a 2015–16 AICAD Fellow. I received lots of support from SFAI and gained valuable teaching experience as full time faculty, particularly in learning how to balance an artistic practice with an academic career. One of the highlights of the year was engaging with other AICAD Fellows during the annual Fellows conference, where we considered ways in which diversity and inclusion can be a central part of the art school experience.”
Malcolm Rio (MArch 2015, Rhode Island School of Design) placed at Maryland Institute College of Art for a second consecutive year. Malcolm is an architectural and graphic designer and thinker. He was recognized with the 2015 Alpha Rho Chi award for his leadership, professional merit and promise in the field. His current research investigates notions of equitable spatial mobility in the age of empire (Hardt & Negri, 2000) and digital-mobile networks.
“The AICAD fellowship has been an invaluable experience. Teaching at MICA has not only connected me with a vast network of creative thinkers and makers through fulfilling and self-actualizing work, but has also advanced my own understanding in architecture, art, and design. There is no better way to learn a subject than through attempting to teach others.”
