Nine Columbia Artists Named 2020 NYSCA/NYFA Fellows

Theatre Alumnus Shayok Misha Chowdhury ’16, Writing Alumni Ricardo Alberto Maldonado ’08 and Ge Gao ’17, and Visual Arts Alumni Vivianne Chiu ’19, Alison Taylor ’05, Elif Uras ’03, and Writing Assistant Professor Shane McCrae were all named NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellows for 2020. Visual Arts Alumni David Henderson ’81 and Asif Mian ’18 were finalists for the fellowship. Chiu, Taylor, and Uras were awarded fellowships for craft/sculpture, and Maldonado, Chowdhury, and McCrae for poetry, and Gao for nonfiction literature. 

For over 30 years, NYFA, with the support of NYSCA, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, and the New York State Legislature, has awarded $7,000 fellowships to individual originating artists living in New York State and/or Indian Nations located in New York State. The Fellows are chosen for the “artistic vision and voice presented in their application.” This year’s highly competitive application cycle drew submissions from 3,536 artists across five disciplines. 

Maldonado’s first book, The Life Assignment, was published last month. He is the translator of Dinapiera Di Donato’s Colaterales (Akashic Books/National Poetry Series). He has received fellowships in poetry from the New York Foundation for the Arts and Queer/Arts/Mentorship. He is managing director at 92Y’s Unterberg Poetry Center. 

Chowdhury is a director, writer, and creator. He is a Resident Artist at HERE Arts Center, a member of BRIClab and The Public Theater’s Devised Theater Working Group, a former Resident Director at The Flea and The Drama League, and an alumnus of Ars Nova’s Makers Lab, New York Theatre Workshop’s 2050 Fellowship, and the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab. 

Gao is a writer, editor, and translator. Her reporting and essays have appeared in Twin Cities Daily Planet, Words Without Borders, and elsewhere. She participated in the New York Foundation of Arts Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program in 2017. Gao has received fellowships from Vermont Studio Center, Catwalk Art Residency, and Cuttyhunk Island Residency.

Chiu is a visual artist who has attended residencies such as Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Sculpture Space, Haystack Mountain School, the Anderson Ranch Arts Center, and the Center for Art in Wood. She is currently an adjunct professor in the Craft/Material Studies program at the Virginia Commonwealth University.

Taylor is a visual artist whose work is included in the public collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas; Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, IA; and Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH, as well as in other prominent collections worldwide. In 2009, she received a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award and the Smithsonian's Artist Research Fellowship Program Award.

Uras is a visual artist. Elif Uras, his first monograph, was published in 2018 by Galerist and Revolver Publishing. His recent exhibitions include Kaynak (The Source), Istanbul (2018) and Deja Vu (Hayal Meyal), Pippy Houldsworth Gallery (2017). He is a 2020 Museum of Arts and Design Artist in Residence. 

McCrae is the author of five books, three poetry chapbooks, and one nonfiction chapbook. His poems have appeared in the Best American Poetry series, Poetry, The American Poetry Review, and others. His awards include the Lannan Literary Award, a Whiting Writer’s Award, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Pushcart Prize.