Winners of the 2025-2026 Working Artist Project: Wilay Mendez Paez, Yanique Norman, Steven L. Anderson
Wilay Mendez Paez
Wilay Méndez Páez is an Afro-Cuban artist whose work explores the intersections of everyday life, urban space, and human connection through the lens of his identity as a Black Hispanic Caribbean man. Born and raised in Cuba, Méndez Páez has exhibited widely in Havana and across the island, as well as internationally in Germany, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Since relocating to Atlanta in 2019, his work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions. From 2020-2022, he served as an artist in residence at the Clark Atlanta University Art Museum, where he deepened his engagement in the city’s cultural and historical landscape. His art bridges geographies and communities, offering an intimate yet critical vision of urban life shaped by race, displacement, and creative survival.
Yanique Norman
Georgia based artist Yanique Norman received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2018) and her BFA from Georgia State University (2014). Her work has been exhibited at the prominent institutions including the High Museum, Zuckerman Museum, Albany Museum, Atlanta Contemporary, Athens Institute for Contemporary Art, University of Virginia, California State University, Florida Atlantic University, University of Central Florida, Columbus University, and Wofford College, as well as galleries such as Goldfinch and MARCH. Norman has received numerous awards and grants, including the Nexus Fund (2024), Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grants (2022,2019), The Individual Artist Career Opportunity Grant (2022), United States Relief Grant (2021) Artadia Award (2020), National Museum of Women in the Arts of Georgia Grant (2020) and the Susan Antinori Visual Artist Grant (2019). She is the author of DECOLONIALITY IN THE BREAK OF GLOBAL BLACKNESS: MOVEMENT, METHOD, POETHEICS, published by Routledge in May 2025, with a second book, MALLEABLE and TRUE, forthcoming from Brink publication in September 2025.
Steven L. Anderson
Steven L. Anderson is and Atlanta- based curator, and arts organizer. He is co-founder and Co-director of Day & Night Projects, an artist-run gallery in Atlanta since 2016. Anderson is a graduate of the University of Michigan and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the United States since 1996. His artworks are found in the Microsoft Art Collection, The Tim and Lauren Schrager Collection, and in the collections of Fulton County Public Arts, Coca-Cola Inc., Emory University Hospitals, the National Park Service, and others. Anderson is a recipient of the 2023 Idea Capital grant, and two-time winner of the Artist Project Grant from the City of Atlanta Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs, recent residencies include Uncool Artist Residency (Brooklyn, NY), Yes, We Cannibal (Baton Rouge, LA), Blue Heron Nature Preserve (Atlanta, GA) Château d’Orquevaux (Orquevaux, FR). Anderson has been a Studio Artist at Atlanta Contemporary, and a WonderRoot Walthall Artist Fellow. Anderson lives in Atlanta with his wife Liz and son Finn.
David Brenneman, Guest Curator
David Brenneman is an experienced art museum curator and director with over 30 years of museum leadership experience. In 1995 David became a curator at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, beginning a 20-year tenure there. He rose to become the High Museum’s Director of Collections and Exhibitions, where he guided all six of the High’s curatorial departments
During his time at the High, he worked closely with a number of talented curators to build the museum’s exhibition and art acquisition program in the field of contemporary art. He facilitated the acquisition of major works of Contemporary art by such artists as Julie Mehretu, Anish Kapoor, and Alex Katz; he worked with the High’s curators to advance commission projects with such artists as Thomas Struth and Martin Parr; initiated a focus on collecting works on paper by Atlanta-based artists; and worked with successive curators of decorative art and design to establish a contemporary design program.
In 2015, he left Atlanta to become the Director of the Eskenazi Museum of Art at Indiana University, where he created Indiana University’s first curator of contemporary art position. David supervised the renovation of the museum’s signature I M Pei building and found ways for their substantial collection of more than 45,000 works of art to become more accessible and engaging for their 40,000+ students, faculty, and staff. The creation of the contemporary curator position and the museum’s renovation resulted in a new time-based media space and the acquisition of numerous works by such artists as Leonardo Drew, Alex Katz, Gerhard Richter, Shahzia Sikander, Anila Agha, MacArthur Binion, Jim Dine, Sam Levi Jones, and Kara Walker, just to name a few.
He now serves as director and CEO of the Telfair Museums of Art in Savannah, Georiga, where he is guiding the museum’s exhibition and art acquisitions program. In spring and summer of 2026, the Telfair will host an exhibition titled “Off the Coast of Paradise: Ossabaw Island, Georgia, 1961-now,” which is curated by the Telfair’s curator of contemporary art, Erin Dunn, and guest curator, Beryl Gilothwest. The exhibition examines the influential artist’s residency program on this pristine coastal barrier island and will include a major commission by the artist Allison Janae Hamilton.
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 54 Fellows over the past 18 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 PNC Foundation and the Molly Blank Fund of the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation.