The Visual Arts Center and Department of Art and Art History welcome artist Taisha Carrington as the 2026–27 St. Elmo Arts Residency Fellow. A committee of VAC staff and Art and Art History faculty selected Carrington’s exceptional application from a pool of over 120 competitive submissions by recent MFA graduates from across the country.
The St. Elmo Arts Residency Fellowship offers a one-year fellowship to a recent graduate of an MFA studio art program outside the University of Texas system, who specializes in painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, sculpture, or multimedia. The residency includes a $40,000 stipend, a one-year faculty position in the Department of Art and Art History, housing with a private studio, access to UT’s academic and art lab resources, and a fully funded exhibition at the Visual Arts Center, scheduled to take place in the spring of 2027. Applications were open to all students graduating from a US-based MFA Studio Art program by May 2026.
Administered by the Visual Arts Center in collaboration with staff from the Department of Art and Art History, the St. Elmo Arts Residency Fellowship is designed to catalyze an artist’s career by providing teaching experience and exposure through a curated exhibition and to bring diverse perspectives and practices to Austin for the benefit of UT students and Austin arts communities.
"TAISHA CARRINGTON QUOTE"
Carrington received an MFA in Studio Art from Yale University in 2026 and a BFA from Pratt Institute in 2018. Her work traces parallels between deep time, the micro-macro movement of particles in bodies of air or water, and the geopolitical conditions of Caribbean microstates, particularly her native Barbados. Carrington studies how humans migrate and adapt by observing how non-human organisms do the same in nature. Viewing materiality as both method and theory, she works with soil, ocean water, breath, sweat, sand, and plants to surface narratives embedded within their material properties. Her research takes form through sculpture, performance, installation, painting, and video.
Carrington’s work can be found in the collections of The Dallas Museum of Art and the Stewart Program for Modern Design in Montreal. She has exhibited works in the United States, Aruba, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, and Barbados, and has participated in residencies including Pratt>Forward and Caribbean Linked x BIAC Reseaux as part of the Biennale in Martinique. Taisha has presented Lectures or workshops with several institutions including Museum of Art and Design NY, Yale Centre for British Art, United Nations Development Program Barbados, Metropolitan State University Denver, Walkers Institute for Regenerative Research, Campus Caraïbéen des Arts and Central Saint Martins University of the Arts London. Taisha was the inaugural Fellow in Residence at the Rhode Island School of Design Jewelry and Metals department in 2024, where she taught and carried out artistic research, and was the 2026 artist fellow at the Yale Peabody Museum.
As the ninth St. Elmo Arts Residency Fellow, Carrington joins a network of artists who have been platformed by the University and who continue to shape contemporary art discourse and arts education following their time at the University of Texas. Past Fellows include Francesca Lally (2025–26), Pablo Tut (2024–25), Zalika Azim (2023–24), Marianne Hoffmeister Castro (2022–23), Armando Cortés (2021–22), Dawn Kim (2020–21), Merideth Hillbrand (2019–20), and Katy McCarthy (2018–19). This year marks the third iteration hosted and organized by the Visual Arts Center.
VAC Director Max Fields says, “Taisha is an excellent addition to the roster of talented artists who have participated in the St. Elmo Arts Residency program. It was clear to the entire selection committee that her practice stood out among her peers, even in a year when more than 120 incredible students from MFA programs across the U.S. applied. We are looking forward to developing an exhibition with Taisha for spring 2027 in partnership with our Curatorial Fellow program, which will bring the artist together with two MA Art History students, Isabella Rafky and Juan José Roque Giraud, to create a solo presentation in the VAC galleries. I am especially excited to bridge Carrington’s interests with external academic departments at the University of Texas, fostering the interdisciplinary collaboration that makes the VAC’s position so unique in the Austin arts landscape.”
A free and open-to-the-public artist talk by Carrington will take place at the Visual Arts Center on Thursday, October 6, at 3 p.m. The artist’s exhibition will open to the public on Friday, January 22, with a reception from 5 to 8 p.m.
Support for this program is provided by the St. Elmo Arts Residency and the Department of Art and Art History.