Spring 2024 RITM Mellon Arts & Practitioner Fellows

Catina Bacote is a writer born and raised in New Haven, Connecticut. Her work exposes the devastating consequences of racial inequality and poverty in the United States. As a fellow, she is completing a nonfiction book chronicling the lasting impact of the 1980s drug epidemic on Black families and communities....

Irishia Hubbard Romaine is an interdisciplinary artist who works primarily with the embodied Black female experience. Her artistic practice is rooted in her cultural identity as a Black female, choreographer, and filmmaker from the South....

Ayana Ross (b. 1977) is a figurative artist, storyteller and art educator whose work combines traditional oil painting methods, using figurative realism, with the elaborate treatment of patterns and decorative design as a visual language to evoke nostalgia, elevate her subjects, and provide deeper context into the work....