AICAD announces placement of 15 New, 9 Returning Post-Graduate Teaching Fellows For 2024/25

COSMOS, 36x32x38(in)
Maple, Walnut, Limba, Spelli, Glass, Brass, Corian
2023, Minsoub (Peter) Sim

The Association of Independent Colleges of Art & Design (AICAD) is pleased to announce the fifteen Fellows selected for the AICAD Post-Graduate Teaching Fellowship for the 2024/25 academic year. Additionally, nine previous fellows will continue their positions for a second year.

The AICAD Post-Graduate Teaching Fellowship provides significant professional practice opportunities to high-achieving Graduate alumni. In contributing to the goal of increasing the racial and ethnic diversity of our faculty, we aspire to create a climate that recognizes and values diversity as central to excellence.

Fellowships include mentoring and professional development opportunities, teaching experience, health benefits, and other monetary support.

The 2024/25 AICAD Fellows are:

Ariel Wills (MFA, 2024, Rhode Island School of Design) placed at Cleveland Institute of Art. Using a combination of traditional media and digital tools, Wills enjoys telling stories with pictures and working with her hands to foster dialogue at the intersections of art and heritage

Yuxiao Mu (MFA, Photography, 2023, Massachusetts College of Art and Design) placed at Kansas City Art Institute. Mu’s practice is driven by conceptual ideas surrounding family, emotion, and memory. She also engages in a multigenerational collaboration with her mother and grandmother who are in China.

Isha Chennuru (MFA, Graphic Design, 2024, Maryland Institute College of Art) placed at Kansas City Art Institute. A graphic designer and illustrator from Mumbai, Chennuru’s graduate work explored understanding the purpose of typefaces in different contexts, image making, and publication design.

Denisse Beltrán (MFA, Illustration Practice, 2024, Maryland Institute College of Art) placed at Kansas City Art Institute. Beltrán is a graphic designer and illustrator from Mexico City whose professional practice has focused on cultural and film dissemination through poster design and branding.

Miguel Lastra (MFA, Ceramics, 2022, Rhode Island School of Design) placed at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Reflecting on the history and legacy of western depictions of bodies in visual culture, Lastra uses ceramics, fiber, audio, and visual coding to expand the array, orientations, and augmentations of bodies depicted in space.

Antoinette Myers Perry (MFA, Painting, 2024, Maryland Institute College of Art) placed at Moore College of Art and Design. Dr. Myers Perry is a multimedia, multidisciplinary artist, poet, filmmaker, and painter, whose semi-figurative/semi-abstract paintings explore themes of (re)memory, memorialization of place, and Gullah-Geechee genealogies/generational histories.

Gwenyth Chao (MFA, 2023, Emily Carr University of Art and Design) placed at Pratt Institute. Driven by an awareness of experimental possibility, Chao’s projects explore how material reconstitution can be informed by an ecological awareness and how transdisciplinary processes can generate new ways of knowing.

Minsoub (Peter) Sim (MFA, Industrial Design, 2023, Parsons School of Design) placed at Pratt Institute. Sim’s work spans across design, design engineering, and sculpture. His projects are diverse, ranging from consumer products to traditionally joined hardwood furniture and sculptures, using materials such as wood, metal, plastic, ceramic, and glass.

Yusef Ferguson (MFA, Film & Video, 2024, California Institute of the Arts) placed at Columbus College of Art and Design. A lover of storytelling and visual image, Yusef’s work is interested in the function over the form, subtly interrogating the mechanics of our reality and poking at the cracks in the armor.

Qianqian Liu (MFA, 2024, School of the Art Institute of Chicago) placed at Columbus College of Art and Design. Author of “A Work of Wrk”, Lui’s work delves into the poetics of the overlooked and the inexplicable through humorous gestures that celebrate the intricacies of the mundane, the periphery, and the failed.

Laura Medina (MFA, Painting & Printmaking, 2024, Yale University) placed at Cleveland Institute of Art. An interdisciplinary artist born in Colombia, Medina’s practice is deeply inspired by the kisses between mountains and sky of her birthplace intertwined with the fantasy landscapes of Disney World and the migrant microcosms of Orlando, FL where she was raised.

Yuanyuan Zhou (MFA, Illustration, 2023, Maryland Institute College of Art) placed at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. an accountant-turned illustrator, Zhou’s works are always full of energy and quirkiness, she loves using bright colors and stylized characters to show the care and love about daily life and livelihood topics.

Nina Martinez (MFA, Illustration, 2024, Rhode Island School of Design) placed at Pacific Northwest College of Art at Willamette University. Martinez is an illustrator, writer, and researcher from Metro Manila, Philippines. Martinez is interested in exploring and questioning the boundaries of graphic narrative, creating comics with interactive elements and unconventional materials

Charles Lee (MFA, 2023, California College of the Arts) placed at Cleveland Institute of Art. Lee’s work confronts the fallacy of U.S. iconography and encourages critical dialogue questioning origins of American myths, the obfuscation of Black cultural creators and innovators from the historical archive and empowers Black viewers with a more accurate depiction of their histories.

Daniela Gomez Paz (MFA, Painting & Drawing, 2023, Yale University) placed at Pratt Institute. Born in Cali, Colombia, Daniela Gomez Paz immigrated to Queens, New York. Her pursued path in the arts and background in pedagogy led her to facilitate a wide range of programs with children, youth, seniors and families in schools, museums, and community centers.

Continuing Fellows:

Em Yue (MFA, Experimental Animation, 2022, California Institute of the Arts) placed at Columbus College of Art & Design.

Yara Elfouly (MFA, Experimental Animation, 2023, California Institute of the Arts) placed at Columbus College of Art & Design.

Seyhr Qayum (MFA, Painting, 2022, Pratt Institute) placed at Kansas City Art Institute.

Heehyun Choi (MFA, Film & Video, 2021, California Institute of the Arts) placed at Kansas City Art Institute.

Ann Dinh (Master of Industrial Design, 2022, Rhode Island School of Design) placed at Pratt Institute.

Chris Salas (MFA, Ceramics, 2023, Cranbrook Academy of Art) placed at School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Aaron Neal (MA, Adaptive Reuse, 2023, Rhode Island School of Design) placed at School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Kimberly Ayala Najera (M.Arch, 2023, Rhode Island School of Design) placed at School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Uthman Olowa (M.Arch, 2023, Rhode Island School of Design) placed at School of the Art Institute of Chicago.