MHS 2026 Jurors & Selected ARtists
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MHS Juror: Gabe Duggan
Gabe Duggan (they/them, b. Buffalo, NY) is the recipient of awards, fellowships and grants including Field Projects’ MUSKEG and ENDS WELL (Upstate Art Weekend), a Juror’s Prize at Art on the Trails (MA), the Integrated Coastal Programs Coastal Fellowship (NC), and more. Duggan has had residencies at Watershed Studios (Gaillimh, IE), Fish Factory Creative Center (Stöðvarfjörður, IS), Sculpture Space Inc. (NY), Praxis Fiber Workshop (OH), amongst others. They are currently an associate professor at East Carolina University.
Artist Statement:
“I construct installations in three-dimensional space through tension and repetition that engage with four-dimensional space through ephemerality or perpetuation. Laboring tediously over precarious systems I challenge definitions of functionality and permanence. In violence/consent (2024), the body is used as a subtractive technology upon the earth's surface. This work etches a mark regardless of consent by the receiving species. Related to desire paths and meditation labyrinths, violence/consent enlists trauma and reparations.”
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MHS Juror: Nneka Kai
Nneka Kai (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, curator, and educator based in upstate New York. Kai is the recipient of the 2023 Artadia Award (Atlanta, GA) and has guest-curated with the Art Institute of Chicago’s Textiles Department. Her work has been exhibited nationally across Atlanta, Chicago, Berkeley, and New York. Kai currently teaches sculpture at Pratt Munson, NY.
Artist Statement:
“My studio practice begins with the question: What is the free Black feminine form? I explore this inquiry through hair—as material, language, and conceptual framework—using interdisciplinary methods that include fiber, sculpture, and performance. Drawing from textile techniques such as braiding, coiling, and stitching, I reimagine these processes in dialogue with found objects creating sites of friction where vulnerability and resistance coexist. Through abstraction, my work resists and interrogates how the past, present, and future remain precariously intertwined, offering space to consider how materiality might be continually negotiated.”