Winners of the 2024-2025 Working Artist Project: Ayana Ross, Sergio Suarez, Corrine Colarusso
Ayana Ross
Ayana Ross (b. 1977, Savannah, GA) is a figurative artist whose work combines traditional oil painting methods, using figurative realism, with the elaborate treatment of patterns and
decorative design as a visual language to evoke nostalgia, elevate her subjects, and provide deeper context into the work.
Often autobiographical in origin, Ross captures everyday people and moments, layering
narratives that address social issues and frequently makes use of historical references. Ross' work explores topics of race, equity, identity, and a broader assessment of our value system, while drawing parallels between ordinary experiences and the greater lessons that can be
learned from them.
A Georgia native, Ross currently lives and works in the metro Atlanta area. She holds a Master of Arts degree in Painting from Savannah College of Art and Design (2021) and a Master of Arts degree in Liberal Arts from University of North Carolina Greensboro (2014). Ross has been recognized as the 2021 winner of the Bennett Prize, the 2022 recipient of the NBAF Horizons Award in Visual Arts, a 2022 Mint Leap Year Fellow and a Spring 2024 Mellon Arts and
Practitioner Fellow through the Center of Race, Indigeneity and Transnational Migration at Yale University.
Sergio Suarez
Sergio Suárez is a Mexican born Atlanta based visual artist and printmaker. His work explores how materiality and semiotics influence notions of the body, metaphysics and various cosmovisions. He is a B.F.A graduate of the Ernest G. Welch School of Art and Design, Atlanta, GA. His recent solo exhibitions include Pale Fire Projects, Vancouver B.C.,KDR, Miami FL; Stove Works, Chattanooga, TN; THE END Project Space, Atlanta, GA & The Consulate General of Mexico in Atlanta, GA Suárez has exhibited at group exhibitions at Whitespace Gallery, Atlanta, GA; The MoCA, Atlanta, GA; and at Pasaquan & the Bo Bartlett Center, Columbus, GA; and Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta, GA. His work was included in the Haugesund International Relief Festival in Norway and the Ionian Arts Center in Greece. Suarez's work is included in the SGCI archives of the Zuckerman Museum in Kennesaw, GA. He attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2023. He has held residencies at The Penland School of Craft, Bakersville, NC; Stove Works, Chattanooga, TN; The Hambidge Center, Rabun Gap, GA; and The Ionian Center for the Arts. Forthcoming residencies include The Bemis Center in Omaha, NE. He is the director of Eso Tilin Projects and was part of the Studio Artist Program at Atlanta Contemporary from 2021 to 2023. He lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia. He has two cats.
Corrine Colarusso
Corrine Colarusso has been the recipient of many awards and grants including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, and a Fulbright-Hayes research and travel grant to India and Nepal. She has been a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome, the Cortona Program of the University of Georgia, and the Ossabaw Island Project, Ossabaw Island, Georgia. She was a tenured Associate professor of painting at the Atlanta College of Art 1975-1996. Her work has been shown in many solo and group exhibitions and is included in numerous public, private and corporate collections such as the High Museum of Art, The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, and Emory University. She lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia.
Apsara DiQuinzio, Guest Curator
Apsara DiQuinzio is senior curator of contemporary art at the Nevada Museum of Art, where she oversees the contemporary program. Over the course of DiQuinzio’s twenty-year career as a curator, she has organized over fifty exhibitions of art, including solo exhibitions with leading contemporary artists such as Michael Armitage, Trisha Donnelly, Vincent Fecteau, Arthur Jafa, Cannupa Hanska Luger, Otobong Nkanga, Christina Quarles, R.H. Quaytman, and Paul Sietsema, among many others. Previously, she was the senior curator of modern and contemporary art and Phyllis C. Wattis MATRIX Curator at the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), where she managed the internationally-renowned MATRIX exhibition series. She has also held curatorial positions at SFMOMA and the Whitney Museum of American Art. In addition to founding the Feminist Art Coalition in 2017, she is the curator and editor of Adaline Kent: The Click of Authenticity; New Time: Art and Feminisms in the 21st Century; Ron Nagle: Handsome Drifter; Harvey Quaytman: Against the Static, Charles Howard: A Margin of Chaos; Six Lines of Flight: Shifting Geographies in Contemporary Art; and The Air We Breathe: Artists and Poets Reflect on Marriage Equality. Moreover, she has contributed essays to numerous exhibition catalogs and has written for Artforum, Mousse, The Exhibitionist, and Cura.
These three 2024-2025 winners bring a total of forty-five artists supported by the Working Artist Project.
About the Working Artist Project
MOCA GA’s Working Artist Project (WAP) was developed in support of established artists in the Metropolitan Atlanta area. Each year the program is funded by the Charles Loridans Foundation, the Antinori Foundation, the AEC Trust, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Including the three Fellows announced today, there are a total of 51 Fellows over the past 17 years. As a museum that is dedicated first and foremost to supporting Georgia’s contemporary artists, it is MOCA GA’s goal to encourage these artists to remain in our city to establish Atlanta as one of the best cities for launching a viable career in the arts.
“This legacy initiative provides an unparalleled level of support for individual artists, expands the Museum’s mission, and promotes Atlanta as a city where artists can live, work, and thrive. MOCA GA supports artists by granting a major stipend to create new work; by presenting a solo exhibition of the new work; by producing an accompanying exhibition catalog; and by providing paid studio apprentices over the course of one year,” —Annette Cone-Skelton, Director of MOCA GA
The Working Artist Project is supported by the Charles Loridans Foundation, the Antinori Foundation, the Molly Blank Fund of the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.