Grant Recipients Grants to Artists Visual Arts 2026

Nyeema Morgan

Photo by Erin Morgan Taylor, courtesy of BOMB magazine.

2026 Grants to Artists
Visual Arts
Visual Artist
Born 1977, Philadelphia, PA
Lives in Chicago, IL
She/Her
Additional Information
nyeemamorgan.com

Artist Statement

I make large-scale drawings, sculptures, print-based works, and installations characterized by an interplay between text, image, and object. Through formal juxtapositions, I grapple with the mechanics of representation and signification—jokes, recipes, canonical artworks, fables, and traps serve as entry points into conceptually layered works about articulations of power and identity. Undergirding my practice are questions such as: “How is mundane violence expressed and ideology reinforced through sanctioned cultural works?" These inquiries and processes allow me to study and put into adverse play the composition, structural forms, and sensual aesthetic of image and object distribution, foregrounding how the soft political power of our cultural material shapes our collective beliefs and understanding.

- December 2025

Biography

Nyeema Morgan is a visual artist whose multimedia practice is driven by a deep curiosity about how articulations of power are woven into our encounters with images, objects, and information. Working across media that includes printmaking, drawing, and sculpture, she plays with oppositional expressions between the warm and the cool, the fabricated and the hand wrought, the grave and the absurd.

Morgan’s 2025 series, studies for traps, presents a range of works including mixed-media sculptures, print-based collages, works on paper, and installation. Considering the essential elements of traps—location, mechanism, and bait— the works investigate the power dynamics between subject and object and their metaphoric and tragicomic resonance. Forthcoming solo and two-person exhibitions of Morgan’s work include Story Structure Pt. 2 at the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society and "take my wife… PLEASE!" at PATRON, both in Chicago, IL.

Other exhibitions include The Set-up, PATRON, Chicago, IL (2022); Nyeema Morgan: Like It Is, The Philadelphia Arts Alliance at the University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA (2021); Soft Power. Hard Margins., table, Chicago, IL (2021); THE STEM. THE FLOWER. THE ROOT. THE SEED., the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Boulder, CO (2020); and horror horror at Grant Wahlquist Gallery, Portland, ME (2018); among others.

Morgan is the recipient of the Harpo Foundation’s Visual Artist Grant (2023), the Chicago Artadia Award (2023), two Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grants (2021, 2012), the Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant (2016), and an Art Matters Foundation Grant (2013).

Morgan holds an M.F.A from the California College of the Arts (2007) and a B.F.A from the Cooper Union School of Art (2000). She is an Assistant Professor of Sculpture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Three side by side graphite pencil prints on coventry rag paper with white frames. Each of the three prints is 127 × 96.5 × 5.1 cm and includes a rectangular image of a page in a book. They are out of order on the wall, but together, it can be deduced that the heading on the incorporated page is “EXTRAORDINARY MEASURES”. Other words throughout the three images include “Modernism”, “Twentieth Century”, “and”, “Thomas”, “America”, and “Afrocentric”. Over the images, again on all three of the prints, are large faded drawings in a light grey, which appear to be of letters.

Like It Is: Extraordinary Measures (Afrocentric Modernism), 2024, Graphite pencil on Coventry rag paper, 50" x 129". Photo by Evan Jenkins.

Three squares of paper that resemble post-its, individually bordered by varying prints on a larger white paper with a white frame. From left to right, in the very center-left of the white frame is a yellow square with about a third of it cut off. In the middle of the square is reverse text. In the top center left there is a pink square, which also has reverse text in the middle. Finally, the third square, this time in blue, is in the very center-right of the white frame. About a fourth of it is cut off by the frame. No longer in reverse print, there are three lines of text “1) location,” with the n cut off, “2) mechan,” with the n cut off, and “3) bait”.

Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird. (studies for traps), 2025, letterpress print on paper with mixed paper media and graphite, 11.5" x 20.75" x 1.5". Photo by Ian Vecchiotti.

Installation view of “Soft Power. Hard Margins.” 32 thematic artworks are placed close to one another on a white gallery wall. Each individual piece includes a light blue or grey mixed-media paper with text, which is illegible due to the distance the photo was taken with, and is framed by gold and/or cream acrylic, cast resin, wood, and metal leafs. White LEDS also border the paper or the rabbet of the frame. A patron stands on grey stone floor tiles, engaging with Morgan’s work. Behind them and against the neighboring wall is a white pedestal stand featuring “May the obdurate foe not be in good health,” a palmyrene funerary bust by Michael Rakowitz.

Objects & Power, Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art, Portland, ME, 2024. Photo Kari Herer.

Close up shot of a light blue mixed media paper that reads “P ERMISSIONTOBE NOS TALGIC F () RAM ERICAN PR O VIN CIALISM,” which is one work in the “Soft Power. Hard Margins.” Installation. It is framed by cream acrylic, cast resin, wood, and metal leafs. White LEDS also border the paper, or the rabbet of the frame. Additional frames with mixed media paper, all of which are cut off in part, encircle this work.

Soft Power. Hard Margins., table, Chicago, IL, 2021. Photo by Robert Chase Heishman.

Installation view of “The Set-up,” featuring two framed artworks side by side on a white wall. To the right is “Like It Is: Extraordinary Endings,” a 127 x 96.5 cm framed graphite pencil print on coventry rag paper. The print itself is about half the size of the white frame, living on its lower half. In the left corner of the print, there are six lines of text. The first is illegible---other than the last letter, an “S.” The rest reads “EXTRAORDINARY ENDINGS OF PRACTICALLY VERYTHING AND EVERYBODY,” with the “V” in “VERYTHING” also being cut off. Very light shadows of that text lays throughout the top left corner down to the bottom left of the print, where there is a lightly drawn rock-like shape, with rectangular shapes with pointed tops laid over it. To the center right, there is a light grey triangle and two darker gray rectangles, extending through the majority of the prints height. In the right corner, there are two more light-grey rock like shapes. To the left of “The Set-up” is the second artwork featured in the installation, “horror horror IV,” 76.2 × 35.6 cm silkscreen print in a white frame. The bottom layer of the print, from top to bottom, is of a black and white digital image of a tree leaves, a black and white digital image of what appears to be a crowd of people at an event—some looking at the camera while others are looking forward—and a blue rectangle with green cactus-like shapes scattered throughout, as well as four orange pennants covering the top fourth of it. The orange pennants are lumped together, dropping from their ends. The following layer of the silkscreen is of a yellow rectangle, which is laid over about a fourth of the entire print. The yellow changes the shade of the blue rectangle to be closer to a lime green. Then, on top of the yellow rectangle is a grey statue. Finally, the last layer is of white text, spread throughout 8 different lines, “The one abo ut the thr ee p igs.”

The Set-up, PATRON, Chicago, IL, 2022. Photo by Evan Jenkins.