NCECA 2026 Multicultural Fellowship Exhibition
Traditional/Tread Bottle Set, 2024, Micah Lewis-Văn Sweezie, porcelain and cobalt, 63 x 18 x 18 in
Dates: February 17 through March 28, 2026
Conference Reception: Thursday, March 26, 6-9PM
Gallery Hours: Wednesday and Friday, 12-5PM; Thursday, 12-2PM
The 2026 NCECA Multicultural Fellowship Exhibition highlights the expansive work of past fellows and centers the fellowship within the structure of the conference. Bringing together artists whose practices span generations, geographies, and material approaches, the exhibition reflects the lasting impact of the Multicultural Fellowship on the field of ceramics and beyond.
The works on view demonstrate how fellows have used clay—and interdisciplinary practices—to address cultural histories, identity, community, and systems of knowledge, often challenging dominant narratives within contemporary art. Collectively, the exhibition underscores the fellowship’s role in fostering sustained artistic inquiry, professional growth, and meaningful dialogue. Ceramic artist Renata Cassiano Alvarez selected works for the exhibition.
The exhibition includes works by the following: Amara Abdal Figueroa, Aram Aldana, José Arenivar-Gómez, Emmanuel (Kstony) Asamoah, Maya Beverly, Yael Braha, Angeliky Castrellon, Jazzmine Curtis, Jerome Fitzgerald Kendrick Jr., Astrid Guerrero, Robyn Gibson, Christina Graland Joseph, Gaby Hijar, Ina Kaur, Kim Le, Micah Lewis-Văn Sweezie, Ross Junior Owusu, Vanna Ramirez, Antra Sinha, Mohamad Soudy, Amal Tamari, Marina Wahbeh, Ari Zuaro, and Cristal Zeballos.
Juror
Renata Cassiano Alvarez is a Mexican-Italian artist born in Mexico City. She focuses in process, where she has developed an intimate relationship with material and its many languages. Influenced by archeology and the collective Latin American experience, she believes in the power of the object as survival and witness to transformation and endurance over time. Objects that bound us in continuity. Her work has been exhibited internationally and can be found in public and private collections. She works between her studio in Veracruz, Mexico and Arkansas, US.
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Recognizing Ourselves
More often than not, the poem by Rilke, “Live the Questions Now,” comes to my mind. To experience the questions, to flow through them, to taste them, this requires complete trust in our vulnerability and the strength that emanates from it. It requires us to recognize ourselves every day. I curated this exhibition from a desire to hold space for openness, for the world, for the multiplicity of voices, and for the many ways we express the complexity of being human. The artists gathered here approach vulnerability not as weakness, but as a shared energy, one that allows us to connect across borders, languages, and histories.
The act of recognizing ourselves, in its many forms, runs through this exhibition as both an experience and a metaphor. Some of the works speak directly to displacement and belonging; others approach it through material, gesture, or silence. Together, they show how movement reshapes us, how we are always in transition, always becoming.
Clay, among other materials present here, carries particular weight. Traditionally tied to permanence and utility, it becomes in these artists’ hands a site of experimentation and hybridity. Through unconventional techniques and unexpected combinations, clay refuses singularity and embraces contradiction. These gestures expand not only the language of the medium but also what it means to hold identity in form.
I am grateful for the opportunity to appreciate and learn from these artists. Curating this exhibition, I wanted to foreground diversity as a strength: a chorus rather than a single voice. Each work stands on its own, yet together they create a landscape of openness and resilience. What emerges is not resolution, but dialogue, an invitation to consider how we come to know ourselves as artists and as humans, through matter, through movement, and through one another.
And as Rilke says, by throwing ourselves into the question, "Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”[1]
- Renata Cassiano Alvarez
[1] Rilke, R. M. (2016). Letters to a young poet. Penguin Classics.
SELECTED ARTWORK
