Winter 2026 Cohort

January–March

Alik Arzoumanian is a children’s book author, illustrator and educator based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She grew up in Beirut, Lebanon, in an Armenian family and holds a BFA in Illustration from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Alik creates playful picture books, primarily in Western Armenian, that highlight small moments and quiet connections.

studioalique.com

SaRa Kim is a transdisciplinary artist and creative researcher based in Boston working at the intersection of Art/Science and autoettnographic inquiry. Experimenting with poetry, light and nature as collaborative mediums, her current artistic practice has been materializing through alternative photo/film processing, botanical dyeing and printing, microscopy, microbial painting, textile/fiber arts, embroidered circuits, poem sculptures and time-based media installation.

Shmontray Jacquett is a New England–based artist, designer, and creative director whose work blurs the boundaries between street art, fashion, and fine art. Through bold imagery and layered symbolism, he transforms stories of identity, survival, and self-definition into powerful visual statements.

Beyond the studio, Shmontray designs and delivers dynamic arts programming with the Eliot School of Fine & Applied Arts and the Mosesian Center for the Arts, creating spaces where emerging artists can explore freedom, culture, and creative truth. He is also the founder and Creative Director of the DEADfamous Brand and the DEADfamous Consortium — two intersecting ventures that merge art, fashion, and community under the mantra “The Grave is Silent. Live Loud.”

Currently, his work includes a digital mural installation at Bradley International Airport, a celebration of resilience, representation, and the transformative power of art in public spaces.

shmontrayjacquett.com

Spring 2026 Cohort

April–June

Lyrical Faith (Ignite Fellow) is an international award-winning Spoken Word Poet and advanced educational researcher in Social Justice Education at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Hailing from and currently residing in The Bronx, NY, she has toured colleges and universities across the country. She has featured in prominent venues such as the World Famous Apollo Theatre as well as global platforms in Paris, South Africa, Ukraine, New Zealand, Mexico and Belize. She is a three-time Women of the World Poetry Slam finalist, a two-time Bronx Poet Laureate finalist, the 2015 Syracuse University Poet of the Year, and the Inaugural UMass Amherst W.E.B. Du Bois Center Poet-In-Residence. She's performed live for the studio audience while being featured on four episodes of America’s favorite game show, Family Feud. She’s shared stages with icons from Dr. Marc Lamont Hill to Ms. Lauryn Hill. Upon introducing her to perform at the 2025 Malcolm X Centennial birthday fundraiser, Marc Lamont Hill described her as "one of the finest poets of her generation."

She’s a graduate of the Public Relations program at Syracuse University and a Masters degree recipient in Higher Education from NYU. Her work has appeared on NPR, iHeartRadio, Button Poetry, Write About Now, Huffington Post Black Voices, News 12 The Bronx, and in several major research publications.

She has served as an officer for the largest educational research association in the world (AERA), where she was a leader in the Hip-Hop Special Interest Group. She’s the founder of a nationwide event known as the Black Artistic Freedom Conference, the head coach of an undergraduate poetry slam team, the recipient of the 2025 Commitment to Diversity Award, and recognized by the African-American Female Professor Awards Association (AAFPAA) for her devotion to promoting education and activism through the arts.

instagram.com/lyricalfaithpoetry

Julia Csekö (Emerging Artist-in-Residence) was born in Colorado and grew up in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In 2010, she moved to Boston, Massachusetts to pursue an MFA at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Tufts University. She is currently a visiting artist at Emerson College for the Summer of 2020 and has a public mural on view at Winter Place, downtown Boston, commissioned by the Boston Downtown BID, and created in partnership with the Boston Literary District. In 2018 Csekö was invited to the Assets for Artists MassMoCA residency program where she further investigated her multi-disciplinary practice as a sculptor, painter, and performer.

Her most recent work gravitates around social experiments grounded on a paradigm shift from competitive to collaborative mindset in social actions and interactions. Csekö is the recipient of a 2016 Walter Feldman Fellowship, awarded by the Arts and Business Council of Greater Boston. She divides her time between being a Practicing Artist and an Art Administrator and is joining Montserrat College of Art as an Adjunct Instructor.

juliacseko.com

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Artists were selected through a competitive juried process led by Mosesian Arts staff in collaboration with two distinguished guest jurors:
 

Layla Bermeo is the Kristin and Roger Servison Curator of Paintings, Art of the Americas, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She previously held curatorial positions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Williams College Museum of Art, and the African American Museum in Philadelphia. Interested in artistic and political exchanges between the United States and Latin America, Layla has organized several installations and exhibitions at the MFA, including Collecting Stories: Native American Art and Frida Kahlo and Arte Popular, for which she also authored the accompanying bilingual publication. She has led language access initiatives and developed the “Curatorial Study Hall” program for local high school students. Layla holds an MA from the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art and a Ph.D. from Harvard University.

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Archy LaSalle is a graduate of Massachusetts College of Art and Design.  

Early in his career, Mr. LaSalle received national and international attention for his artistic documentation of the M.B.T.A. Orange Line Southwest Corridor subway system project in Boston.  He was awarded an artist's residency at the Foundation Karolyi in Vence, France, which subsequently earned him a residency at Cite Internationale des Artes in Paris. Mr. LaSalle’s work is included in Black Photographers: 1945-1985, published by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. His photographs can also be found in the collection of many art museums including the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the DeCordova Museum, and the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. 

In conjunction with his artistic career, Mr. LaSalle has been a committed and dedicated educator who lectures frequently at art institutions here and abroad. For three decades, he taught in the photography department at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. As an art educator, he was the recipient of an ART grant from The Philanthropic Initiative for a photographic project in South Africa and was the 2009 winner of the Excellence in Teaching National Award by CENTER in Santa Fe.

In the past few years, he began to focus on the considerable lack of representation of Black visual artists in the permanent collections of art museums. He founded a grassroots organization to address the lack of representation of Black and Brown artists in the permanent collections of our art museums.  The mission of “WHERE ARE ALL THE BLACK PEOPLE AT” is to work directly with Museum Directors and Curators to help change the process and balance of acquisitions to more fairly represent our diverse world.  Partnering with the Fitchburg Art Museum, WAATBPA created a residency and collaboration with emerging artists in a generative mentor-mentee relationship that resulted in a multi-disciplinary exhibition in 2023, Dialogues, Diasporas, and Detours Through Africa.

Archy is currently on the Board of Advisors for the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University and on the Board of Advisors at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA. 

archylasalle.com