Meet Our 2026 Fellows
Laylah Ali, Ossorio Fellow
Laylah Ali (b. 1968, Buffalo, New York) is a visual artist whose main focus over her career has been paintings and drawings, though she has also worked in performance and online media. Her latest travelling solo exhibit Is anything the matter? Drawings by Laylah Ali most recently opened in October 2025 at the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine. Ali has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis; and MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts, among others, and her work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale and Whitney Biennial. Her works are included in the permanent collections of numerous public institutions, including the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Her work and process were highlighted in season 3 of the acclaimed PBS Art21 series.
Established in 2019 and supported by the Ossorio Foundation, the Alfonso Ossorio Creative Production Grant provides financial support to artists affiliated with the Colby Museum and its Lunder Institute to further their intellectual pursuits, research, and the creation of new artworks that expand the boundaries of American art.
In her fellowship, she will deepen her study of Jacob Lawrence’s print series on Toussaint L’Ouverture and The Legend of John Brown as she begins a new body of work. She will also engage with her exhibition, Is anything the matter? Drawings by Laylah Ali on view at the Colby Museum through April 19, including participating in a roundtable conversation with fellow artists.
Maria de Los Angeles, Lunder Institute Fellow
Maria de Los Angeles (b. 1988, Michoacán, Mexico) is a Mexican American artist who addresses migration, belonging, and identity through her drawing, painting, printmaking, and wearable sculptures. De Los Angeles holds an MFA from Yale School of Art, a BFA from Pratt Institute, and an Associate Degree from Santa Rosa Junior College. She has been an Artist in Residence at the Sun Valley Museum of Art, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, MASS MOCA, El Museo del Barrio, LACMA, Monira Foundation, and Schneider Museum of Art within Oregon Center for the Arts at Southern Oregon University. De Los Angeles has had solo exhibitions at Schneider Museum of Art, Ashland, Oregon; the Museum of Sonoma County, Santa Rosa, California; and Goggleworks, Reading, Pennsylvania. She has completed public murals in Glen Ellen, California, Sutter Santa Rosa Regional Hospital, Santa Rosa Junior College, and the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts. Her artwork is in the permanent collection of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas; Museum of Sonoma County, Santa Rosa, California; the Marcus Collection, San Diego Mesa College; Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts; and the Jack Leissring Studio, Santa Rosa, California. De Los Angeles is currently a critic and assistant director of graduate studies in Painting and Printmaking at the Yale School of Art. She lives and maintains a studio in Jersey City.
Through her fellowship, she will expand her storytelling-based drawing practice through student and community workshops—from wearable clothing projects to collaborative drawings—and will conduct research on pastoral depictions, women, and family across the collection.
Demian DinéYazhi´, Lunder Institute Fellow
Demian DinéYazhi´ (b. 1983 in Gallup, New Mexico) is a Diné artist, poet, and curator born to the clans Naasht’ézhíTábaahá (Zuni Clan Water’s Edge) and Tódích’íí’nii (Bitter Water). They received their BFA in Intermedia Arts from the Pacific Northwest College of Art. They have exhibited at Nuit Blache in Toronto, Canada, Biennale of Sydney, Whitney Museum of American Art, National Gallery of Art, Pioneer Works, and ICA-LA. DinéYazhi´'s art practice enacts a transdisciplinary strategy through vibrant, radiating neon signs; letterpress posters reimagined from social media posts; self-published books and zines; and endurance performances and sonic collaborations that unsettle remnants of colonial assimilative conditioning in the body.
In their fellowship, running 2026–2028, DinéYazhi´ will continue their long-term work supporting R.I.S.E.: Radical Indigenous Survivance & Empowerment artist and poet Fellows. They will also collaborate with Wabanaki partners throughout their fellowship, on workshops and community gatherings grounded in Indigenous survivance, while researching Native artists and works related to representation and identity within the collection.
Merik Goma, Lunder Institute Fellow
Merik Goma (born 1987 in Manistee, MI) is an alumnus of the NXTHVN Studio Fellowship Program. As a photo and installation artist, Merik creates interior spaces that invite others to engage with the work. He constructs sets that the work inhabits, transforming the space to generate complex narratives. The final form of his work often becomes a photograph, the sets and installations he builds serve as the foundation which helps to shape the characters, their narratives, and their motivations. Goma’s work has been exhibited in galleries such as Tilton Gallery, New York; Management Gallery, New York; and NY Photo Fair. He has also shown in Miami at Andrew Reed Gallery, El Espacio 23, and Art Basel. Merik was a representative for Connecticut in the 2022 New England Triennial. His artworks are included and shown in the collections of 21C Museum, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut; the Detroit Institute of Arts; and the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York.
Over the course of his fellowship, he will work with writing, psychology, and African American Studies classes to explore visibility, liminality, and perception, drawing on collection works that resonate with his investigations of interiority and the in-between spaces of focus and blur.
Alex Jackson, Lunder Institute Fellow
Alex Jackson (b. 1993, Milwaukee, WI) lives and works in the Philadelphia area. He holds an MFA from Yale University, a BFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and was a resident at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Jackson’s practice converges at the disciplines of both painting and writing, using narrative and worldbuilding as conceptual frameworks for image-making. Shifting away from conventional laws of physics, linear narratives, color theories, and racial imaginaries that position blackness as the site of negation, Jackson considers a universe tending to the possible articulations of black life and black thought outside of the colonial paradigms of integration and reconciliation. This narrative space serves as the guiding foundation, ethos, and framework for his practice as a writer and image-maker. He has had several solo exhibitions at Steven Zevitas Gallery in Boston and Jenkins Johnson Gallery in New York.
In his fellowship, Jackson will co-develop a workshop with music that links visual and musical composition, contribute to public conversations on drawing, and study works by Jacob Lawrence and Bob Thompson to deepen his research on narrative structure.
Joshua A. M. Ross, Lunder Institute Fellow
Joshua A.M. Ross (b. 1992, Indianapolis) holds a MFA in Art from the University of California, Irvine, and a BFA in Photography from Herron School of Art in Indianapolis, Indiana. Ross's work explores the interplay between drawing and photography through notions of performance, occasioning sculptural and spatial interventions. His artworks incorporate creative participants, fabrics, and bodily limbs as critical focal points interlaced with representational and abstract scenes. Ross has exhibited nationally and internationally, most recently showing alongside a furniture designer in an exhibition titled Ode To Sunflower in Los Angeles. Notable exhibitions include Shadow Tracer at the Aspen Museum of Art, Aspen, Colorado; Loitering is Delightful, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery; Slippers, Queens LA, Los Angeles; and a series of performances titled Telathon at Human Resources Los Angeles.
During his fellowship, he will offer community dialogues as he examines the social and conceptual nature of photography. Grounded in close study of works by Harry Callahan, Inge Morath, and Lou Stoumen, he will explore how drawing and photography shape one another, generating new written, visual, and dialogic reflections that connect historical images to contemporary practice and lived experience.
Formerly announced fellows returning in 2026 include Michael Namingha.
Additional information about these fellows and opportunities to engage with them on campus will be announced throughout the year.
Press Contact:
Jillian Scott, jscott@colby.edu