2025 NCECA Multicultural Fellowship Exhibition
Group Exhibition
March 7th - May 3rd 2025
Utah Museum of Contemporary Art

Participating artists: 
Japheth Asiedu-Kwarteng, Astrid Guerrero, Tomo Ingalls, Sepideh Kalani, Varuni Kanagasundaram, Kim Le, Kimberly Orjuela, Ross Junior Owusu, Vanna Ramirez, Amber Pierce, Danyang Song, Mohamad Soudy, Garima Tripathi, Bianca Turner

Everyone’s story matters, and to tell it through the material of clay leaves us, the viewer, with the imprint of the artist’s vulnerability, power, and voice. It was an honor to sit with these stories and learn so much from every applicant who bravely created and shared. The fourteen artists in the Multicultural Fellowship Exhibition represent a small part of the worldly and culturally expansive clay cannon. The NCECA fellowship and exhibition that runs concurrently with its annual conference is a vital testament and continued necessity to clay and its communities.

The selected works unravel a range of personal narratives from silenced and forgotten histories, reclamation of the personhood of the historically suppressed, and the passing down of familial stories, and they examine the current state of politics with the layers of joy, absurdity, wit, and humor. I was deeply affected by how their narratives were explored through the variety of forms like overly adorned vessels, figurative works, and abstracted forms, and the investigations with materials and techniques explored through video and wall work. Their works become important reflections of representation, what stories we tell, and the world we want to see. I hope these artists and their works resonate with you and that you continue sharing their works with your communities.

Many thanks to the artists and their powerful works, the staff at NCECA for organizing this process, and the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art for hosting this exhibition.

—Jennifer Ling Datchuk, Juror