Pathways 2024: The Carlos Malamud Prize Exhibition

Location: UCF Art Gallery

This exhibition is the result of a collaborative partnership between the UCF Art Gallery at the University of Central Florida and the Rollins Museum of Art to celebrate and support emerging professional artists working in Florida. Juried by an external panel of three professionals from various areas of the art world, this year’s edition of the exhibition features six artists with diverse practices. The selection includes a variety of media, themes, scales, and approaches, showing a wide breadth of perspectives and experiences. Works by the six finalists will be shown at both venues, creating opportunities for engagement with two of the area’s major academic constituencies and their surrounding communities. The winning artist of Pathways: The Carlos Malamud Prize will receive a $10,000 cash prize, a solo exhibition at the UCF Art Gallery in 2025, and will participate as a juror for the following edition of the exhibition. The winner will also receive additional professional development and support. This consistent engagement over time makes Pathways unique and transformative among other art competitions. It hopes to nurture emerging artists and provide a pathway to success, which coincides with the core missions of both presenting institutions.

Join us for the following:

Opening Reception and Prize Winner Announcement at UCF Art Gallery on Thursday, May 30 from 5-7 p.m.

Register Here

View Virtual Gallery

Virtual Artist Talks with the Pathways 2024 finalists: Each artist will present their creative practice and research. Attendees can participate in a Q&A following the artists presentations. The event is free but registration is required.

Pathways 2024 Virtual Artist Talk: Patricia L. Cooke, Tenee’ Hart, and Diego Alejandro Waisman | June 11 at 6 p.m. EDT
View recording HERE

Pathways 2024 Virtual Artist Talk: Samuel Aye Gboyin, Fernando Ramos, and Clio Yang | July 16 at 6 p.m. EDT
View recording HERE

Exhibition tours at both the UCF Art Gallery and Rollins Museum of Art: Each tour will be guided by Shannon Lindsey (MFA, Associate Lecturer and UCF Art Gallery Director) and Gisela Carbonell, Ph.D. (Curator, Rollins Museum of Art). No registration needed beforehand.

Exhibition Tour at UCF Art Gallery | August 23 at 11 a.m.

Exhibition Tour at Rollins Museum of Art | August 30 at 11 a.m.

The exhibition is supported in part by the Pabst-Steinmetz Foundation; the funding for the prize is generously provided by Mr. Carlos Malamud of Miami, FL.

This year’s three jurors are:

Ginger Gregg Duggan, the founding partner of c2 – curatorsquared, which develops exhibitions of international, cross-media contemporary art and design that explore current cultural issues

Dennis Scholl, a visual artist, contemporary art collector, and award-winning documentary filmmaker focusing on arts and culture

Eugene Ofori Agyei, the Ghana-born, currently New York-based artist and winner of the Pathways 2022: Carlos Malamud Prize

FINALISTS | PATHWAYS 2024: CARLOS MALAMUD PRIZE

Buenos Aires–born, Miami-based Diego Waisman is a visual artist who explores themes of social and economic displacement, identity, and exile. Waisman utilizes documentary photography, video, and installation to build connected narratives about overlooked social topics. He holds an animation degree from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, a bachelor’s in studio art from the University of Miami and an MFA from Florida International University. In 2022, Waisman received the Green Space grant, which funded and exhibited his installation This Community, and the 30th Annual Emerald Coast National Best-in-Show, organized by Northwestern Florida State College. In 2023, he participated in the Urban History Association’s 10th Biennial, where he presented a paper on his recent research and creative work around issues of affordable housing in South Florida. He is a Ratcliffe Art + Design Incubator fellow and has received an arts scholarship from the Berkowitz Contemporary Foundation and the Faena Art Curatorial Studies Scholarship. His first monograph, Sunset Colonies, will be released by the University Press of Florida in Fall 2024.

Patricia L. Cooke was born and raised in Greensboro, North Carolina. She earned her BFA in 2011 from Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. In 2015, Cooke was awarded a Graduate Teaching Assistant Scholarship from the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida where she earned her MFA in Sculpture in 2018. Cooke currently holds the position of Lecturer in Sculpture at the University of Miami. Cooke lives and works in North Miami Beach, Florida with her loving partner Wade and three cats.

Clio Yang (she/they) is a filmmaker, video artist and film educator who actively engages her multiple cultural background while negotiating a unique identity that calls into question the very idea of media representation. She takes a generalist approach that includes cinematography, photography, writing, sound, and video editing. A lesbian woman born and raised in Jinan, China, and the first in her family to attend college in the U.S., she portrays disconnections and displacement, but also love and reconciliation in her queer experience that straddles East Asian and American languages and cultures. She points focus to socio-economic issues faced by marginalized groups in her communities, like those in Florida, and among foreigners and Chinese in the South. Projects she worked on have been screened at Florida Film Festival, Athena Film Festival, Global Peace Film Festival, South East European Film Festival LA, and so on. She established her film production knowledge and skills by working under an industry setting as well as a micro-budget independent setting, across narrative, documentary, and experimental. Clio graduated magna cum laude from Barnard College of Columbia University with a Film Studies BA. She is currently a film lecturer teaching post-production and screenwriting at University of Central Florida, where she earned her feature film production MFA with documentary “And They Saved My Sorry Ass.”

Samuel Aye-Gboyin is an artist who works in various mediums such as design, photography, video, and animation and is currently an MFA candidate in Art and Technology at the School of Art and Art History, University of Florida. Samuel received his master’s degree with an emphasis in Graphic Design from Eastern Illinois University in 2021, in addition to his bachelor’s degree in communication design with a concentration in animation and motion graphics from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science & Technology in 2018. Samuel utilizes an interdisciplinary approach to his work using these mediums to track what is happening today. Be it his frame-to-frame animation technique or compelling monochrome images, he investigates the topics of commerce, migration, globalization, and hybridity. His work bears witness to the ever-evolving conversation between the fleeting realms and the parallel worlds that coexist.

Tenee’ Hart is an ‘unconventional’ fiber sculpture artist pursuing themes of feminism that delve into topics of beauty, anatomy, and the inequality of women. Wrapped fibers, gushing forms, and the manipulation of the ‘everyday’ are crucial components within Hart’s works. Her abstract forms remain committed to an intriguing physicality that comes from palpable and intentional material usage. Hart hails from Virginia, where she received her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Mary Washington in 2011. Later, Hart earned her Masters of Fine Arts degree from Florida State University, where she has been teaching, at the college level, since the completion of her degree in 2015. Hart is currently the Co-Head of ODL for FSU | Department of Art. Beyond her role as an educator, Hart is the sole Graduate Advisor and Coordinator for the Department of Art at Florida State University.

Fernando Ramos is a queer Latin American artist born in Miami, Florida and currently lives and works in Miami, Florida. Ramos received an Associate in the Arts from Miami Dade College. Selected group exhibition includes inaugural exhibit SPACE, 2023, Cape Center Cape in Canaveral, FL; 92nd Annual Online Juried Open Exhibition, 2023, National Arts League, New York, New York; Connections Online Juried Open Exhibition, 2023, Collage Artists of America, Studio City, California. Ramos Received Best in Show at the Beaux Arts Festival Held by the Lowe Museum in Miami, Florida (2011 & 2012) as well as Best in Show at the Coconut Grove Woman’s Club 9th Annual Young Artists’ Gallery in Coconut Grove FL (2011), Merit Award Winner at the 92nd Annual Online Juried Open Exhibition.