Since 2002, the Kennedy Center and Volkswagen Group of America have presented the VSA Emerging Young Artists Program to recognize and showcase the work of emerging young artists living with disabilities, ages 16-25, who are currently residing in the United States. Connected, the 18^th exhibition presented as part of the VSA Emerging Young Artists Program, gives 15 young artists the opportunity to display their work in venues across the United States where each artist’s individual talent, mode of expression, and view of the world is showcased and valued.

This year’s theme asks artists to connect, to span new distances, and to see unexpected relationships. When is connection, or disconnection, most needed? What roads lead us there? Overlapping stories and interrelated ideas can overwhelm or can create important new discoveries. These artworks resonate deeply and spark greater understanding of our connected lives.

Michelle Miles, age 22, of Charlottesville, Virginia, won the $20,000 Grand Prize for hand model, a short film. Miles's recent work demonstrates an interest in how we conceal and reveal aspects of our identities, specifically through signifiers of disability—in this piece, using her own hands affected by her neuromuscular condition. She first explored the images and fantasies of her own personal experiences, and then began an investigation of a new way to represent disability in conversation with the symbols, colors, and gestures of classical art, where positive representations of disability are largely absent. The film hand model accentuates how her gestures and ways of gripping objects tend to reference the hands found frequently in Renaissance-era paintings. In the film, she uses objects that symbolize beauty, femininity, or sexuality, positioning disability in realms where it is traditionally excluded. Miles graduated from the University of Virginia in May of 2019, and works as the Access and Inclusive Education Intern for the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Savannah Magnolia, age 23, of Tampa, Florida, took the $10,000 First Prize for After Getting Your Heart Ripped Out, an acrylic painting on canvas. With a background in the health sciences, laboratory precision, and the hidden physiology of the body, Magnolia’s work merges science with art. Instead of depicting this combination as stoic medical textbook illustrations, she re-presents anatomy through stylized forms, hyper-saturated colors, and precise technical execution without using tape or stencils to create shapes. Creating these paintings has helped her embrace life with an autoimmune disorder by illustrating that diseases are often invisible on the surface. She explores the role that medicine can play in art and that art can subsequently play in medicine by addressing both the positive and negative aspects of healthcare. She hopes to have a successful career as a painter, to secure gallery representation, and to continue to spark conversations about the convergence of art and science. Magnolia received a BFA from Ringling College of Art and Design. She works as a studio artist in Tampa, Florida.

Daveed Baptiste, age 22, of Brooklyn, New York, won the $6,000 Second Prize for Hood Dandy, a still photograph. Baptiste was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and immigrated to North Miami, Florida when he was nine. In this photo series, he examines the social dynamics within the Haitian American home by constructing sets of intimate living spaces and positioning both black and Haitian Americans in these re-imagined realities. The sets are built by collecting and rearranging material elements that construct the Haitian identity, symbolizing financial status, choice, and personality. As a child, Baptiste remembers his parents understanding his attention difficulties, hyperactivity, and impulsiveness as “bad manners” and “misbehavior” that often resulted in physical discipline. Hood Dandy aims to relate these frustrations through the home’s interior and the subject’s face. Currently Baptiste is creating a cross-disciplinary project for his final year at Parsons School of Design. He will graduate in 2020.

The following artists each received an Award of Excellence in the amount of $2,000:

• Jesus Miguel Avena, Santa Fe, New Mexico, age 21
• Timothy Bair, New York, New York, age 22
• Aurora Berger, South Strafford, Vermont, age 24
• Rora Blue, San Francisco, California, age 23
• Malcolm Corley, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, age 20
• Lorenzo DiAndrea, Bound Brook, New Jersey, age 22
• Libby Evan, Albany, New York, age 21
• Courtney Lowry, Baltimore, Maryland, age 22
• Meghan McDunnah, Bar Harbor, Maine, age 21
• Julia McGehean, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, age 23
• Julia O’Bryan, Tayor, Texas, age 22
• Lexie Peterson, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, age 21