CRITICAL WRITING FELLOWSHIP
The Momus Critical Writing Fellowship provides sustained mentorship, editorial support, and network-building to early-career art writers, critics, and publishers. The third cohort of the Fellowship includes Zack Ngin, David Ayala-Alfonso, and Alexandra Méndez García.
Mentorship was provided by Momus editors Catherine G. Wagley, Merray Michael Mina, and Jessica Lynne, who says:
As this year’s Critical Writing Fellowship mentor, I am excited to dream alongside, champion, and closely support writers whose perspectives are not readily present in art writing. Writers are encouraged to be ambitious in their proposals as there are no thematic priorities. I see this fellowship as a time for daring writing informed by clear, guiding frameworks. This fellowship is designed to make room for the pleasure of questions and surprising investigations.
Additionally, Momus Publisher Sky Goodden provided publishing mentorship to Andrii Ushytskyi.
The 2024 Momus Critical Writing Fellowship is generously supported by Critical Minded.
Participant Bios:
David Ayala-Alfonso lives and works in Mexico City as a curator and writer. He is a guest curator for Independent Curators International and a Visiting Critic for the At The Transit Bar series. His research addresses visual culture and critical heritage, focusing on the political and ecological implications of extractive practices. He contributes to numerous publications in the US, Mexico, and the UK, and mentors artists in different residency programs in Mexico City. Ayala-Alfonso earned his MA in Visual and Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has participated in curatorial residencies in France, Colombia, the US, the UK, and Germany.
Alexandra Méndez García is a Puerto Rican art historian. She holds an MA from the University of Texas at Austin where she studied at the Center for Latin American Visual Studies. Her essays, which interrogate the connections between art and ecology, have been published in Intervenxions, US LatinX, Art Forum, and Plástica.
Zach Ngin is an art worker from San Francisco. They are currently the curatorial assistant at the MIT List Visual Arts Center and an art editor at n+1. They have previously held positions at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the MIT Press, and Brown University. They have contributed to exhibitions and projects with Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme, Carrie Mae Weems, Red Canary Song, Steina, and Trinh T. Minh-ha, among others. As an independent art writer, their most recent piece is about the Asian American artist network Godzilla and the ambiguous lessons of the 1990s. Zach lives in Providence, Rhode Island.
Andrii Ushytskyi is a writer based in Kyiv, Ukraine, where he is editor of Solomiya, an independent Ukrainian-German print magazine that showcases Ukrainian cultural and artistic resistance to Russian imperial aggression. His writing has been published by Playground, Slanted, Most, and he has contributed as editor and translator to the Secondary Archive project, an online archive preserving the works of women artists from Central and Eastern Europe, aiming to address their historical invisibility in art.
PAST CRITICAL WRITING FELLOWS
CRITICAL WRITING FELLOWS 2023
The 2023 Fellowship was delivered in partnership with Eyebeam Art + Technology Center, with mentorship overseen by Rahel Aima and editorial support from Jessica Lynne.
Kira Xonorika is an interdisciplinary artist, researcher, and writer. Her work explores the connections between futurism, AI collaboration, trans and queer temporalities, dynamics between the Global North and South, indigenous sovereignty, internet aesthetics, and Web3. They edited an issue of the GenderIT journal titled “Trans Perspectives on Technology & Politics from Latin America.” Their writing has been published by e-flux, Cambridge University, and Tonantzin. They have recently given lectures at King’s College London, the University of Eau Claire, and the University of Buenos Aires.
Doreen A. Rios is an independent curator and researcher based in Mexico City. Her work focuses on digital art, post-digital practices, and new materialities. Ríos is founder and director of [ANTI]MATERIA, an online platform dedicated to the research and exhibition of art produced through digital media. From 2019 to 2021 she was chief curator at Centro de Cultura Digital Mexico City and is currently part of the international selectors committee for the Lumen Art Prize. She VJs at Minipixel, conducts experimental research at Unidad de Conciencias Colectivas Terrestres, and teaches at CENTRO and Universidad Anáhuac. Ríos holds a MA in Contemporary Curating with a specialization in digital cultures from Winchester School of Arts and a degree in Architecture from Tecnológico de Monterrey. Read Doreen A. Rios’s published fellowship text here.
Cassie Packard is a Brooklyn-based art writer interested in the intersection of visual culture and queerness, networks, and worlding. She has bylines at publications including Art in America, Artforum, ArtReview, BOMB, The Brooklyn Rail, Financial Times, frieze, Hyperallergic, Los Angeles Review of Books, and The New Inquiry, among others. She has contributed several catalogue essays and exhibition texts, and her first book is forthcoming from Frances Lincoln. A member of the International Association of Art Critics, Packard was a 2022 Recess Critical Writing Fellow and a 2019 Fellow in the Art & Law Program. She was previously a researcher at Hauser & Wirth and holds a MA in Art History from University College London and a BA in Art History from Brown University. Read Cassie Packard’s published fellowship text here.
Cassie Packard, Kira Xonorika, and Doreen A. Rios.
CRITICAL WRITING FELLOWS 2021
The 2021-22 Fellowship was delivered in partnership with Eyebeam Art + Technology Center, with mentorship overseen by Nora N. Khan and editorial support from Rahel Aima and Jessica Lynne.
Arushi Vats is a New Delhi-based arts, literary, and culture writer. From a highly competitive applicant pool, Vats astounded us with the clarity of her vision, the strength of her early publishing experience (including platforms such as MARCH: a journal of art & strategy, Alternative South Asia Photography, The Karachi Collective, and Critical Collective), and the depth of her resonance with Nora N. Khan’s practice. Further, Vats’s ambition to write on art “as a site for both lyrical affinities and radical challenges” aligned meaningfully with the goals of the Fractal Fellowship at Eyebeam.
In addition to publishing in cultural venues including LSE International History and Write | Art | Connect, Vats has published short stories and poetry in The Gulmohar Quarterly, Hakara Journal, and PIX Quarterly. She has also authored several curatorial essays, including for a volume titled The Constitution of India at 70: Celebrate, Illuminate, Rejuvenate, Defend, published by Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust in 2021. Vats was featured on Momus: The Podcast (Season 5, Episode 6) reading from and discussing Exit the Rehearsal: A Body in Delhi, published by Runway Journal. Read Arushi Vat’s published fellowship text here.
Simon Wu is a writer and curator based in Brooklyn and Philadelphia. His writing has appeared in publications including Art in America, BOMB, The Drift, frieze, and Momus. He is an alum of the Whitney Independent Study Program and a curator with the Racial Imaginary Institute. He is a 2021 grantee of the Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. Read Simon Wu’s published fellowship text here.
Eugene Yiu Nam Cheung is a writer based in Berlin, and founding editor of institutional critique platform Decolonial Hacker. He studied art history, gender studies and law at the University of Sydney, and is currently the curatorial assistant at the Julia Stoschek Collection, Berlin. In 2021, he was awarded the International Award for Art Criticism.
Arushi Vats, 2021; Eugene Yiu Nam Cheung (image credit: Agustín Farias); Simon Wu (image credit: Thomas Blair).