“With more than 500 artists applying for the award, it was no mean feat to arrive at a collective agreement on five with whom to do studio visits: so many incredible ideas and approaches to discern between. Devin, Erick, Hadi, Sable Elyse, and Sasha were all inspiring and thought provoking in their practices. Each is honing an approach to art-making that is unfamiliar (in the “I haven’t seen anything quite like this” way). The work is socially conscious and intense; personal, resourceful, and generative. They each offer a strong, unique, and uncompromising creative vision, leaving us with the impossible task of having to compare radically different outputs.”

-Kate Fowle & Justine Ludwig

Devin N. Morris(b. 1986, Baltimore, Maryland) is interested in abstracting American life and subverting traditional value systems through the exploration of racial and sexual identity in mixed media paintings, photographs, writings and video. Morris combines elements of two-dimensional collage with three-dimensional objects to create surreal landscapes and elaborately constructed environments. These imaginary domestic spaces are rooted in the familiar and reference commonly found household materials and fabrics. Using various materials found within these spaces, the arrangements question how intimacy and ownership transform the utility of domestic spaces and extend their mythology. Gestures of kindness are inspired by his experiences growing up in Baltimore and his later experiences navigating the world as a black queer man.