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Home » News » Art Alum Abigail Lucien Receives Prestigious 2020 Harpo Fellowship

Art Alum Abigail Lucien Receives Prestigious 2020 Harpo Fellowship

Published March 1, 2020

Harpo Foundation is very pleased to announce that in 2019 the Foundation awarded 4 direct grants to artists, 4 project grants to organizations, and 3 residency fellowships. One of those fellowships was awarded to FSU Art BFA ’14 Abigail Lucien, who’s practice looks at ways cultural identities and inherited colonial structures transmit to the body and psyche. Part familiar, part foreign, Lucien’s works employ an architectural vernacular – challenging systems of assimilation through material and asking what it means for the body to empathize with a place. The works foreground their Haitian-American heritage by addressing notions of visibility, authenticity, and hybridity as they relate to a multicultural queer identity.

Abigail Lucien (b. 1992, Dallas, TX) is an interdisciplinary artist raised in Cap-Haitian, Haiti and the northeast coast of Florida. They hold a BFA from Florida State University and an MFA in Printmaking from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Lucien’s practice looks at ways cultural identities and inherited colonial structures transmit to the body and psyche. Part familiar, part foreign, Lucien’s works employ an architectural vernacular – challenging systems of assimilation through material and asking what it means for the body to empathize with a place. The works foreground their Haitian-American heritage by addressing notions of visibility, authenticity, and hybridity as they relate to a multicultural queer identity. Their work has exhibited at museums and institutions such as MoMA PS1 in Long Island City, New York, Atlanta Contemporary in Atlanta, GA., Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Museum of Fine Arts in Tallahassee, FL, Woman Made Gallery in Chicago, IL, as well as High Tide Gallery, Vox Populi Gallery, and The Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia, PA. Lucien is currently based in Richmond, VA where they teach as a full-time faculty member in the Sculpture + Extended Media department at Virginia Commonwealth University.