Pathways: The Carlos Malamud Prize is a collaborative partnership between the Rollins Museum of Art and the UCF Art Gallery that celebrates and supports emerging professional artists working in Florida. Meet the six finalists for 2026 whose works will be on view in both venues.
Alex Awuku
Alex Awuku is a contemporary ceramist and mixed-media artist from Kumasi, Ghana, whose practice bridges tradition and innovation. Since beginning his artistic journey in 2002, Awuku has cultivated a career that intertwines craft, education, and cultural research. He earned a BA in Industrial Art (Ceramics concentration) and a Diploma in Education from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), as well as a professional certificate in Self-Help Group Formation from the ITEC program in India. He is currently a Master of Fine Arts candidate in Ceramics at the University of Florida, College of Art. Awuku’s research investigates the alienation of Ghanaian oral storytelling traditions, particularly Kwaku Ananse narratives, in the digital age. By combining clay, wood, metal, jute rope, and computer debris, he re-materializes these oral traditions as powerful tactile archives. His works embody a dialogue between ancestral memory and contemporary technological disruption, offering viewers spaces for reflection on resilience, identity, and cultural continuity. His practice has been showcased in multiple international exhibitions, with his artwork featured on the cover of International Journal of Education through Art 19.3 and cited in the NCECA Journal (Vol. 45, p. 95). Awuku’s work continues to evolve as a compelling voice in contemporary ceramic practice, weaving together storytelling, materiality, and critical inquiry.
Michael Cannata
Michael Cannata is currently a Master of Fine Arts candidate at The University of South Florida (Tampa, FL). Cannata received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from The New York State School of Ceramics at Alfred University (Alfred, NY). In 2020, Cannata participated in two residency programs at Guldagergaard International Ceramic Research Center (Skaelskor, Denmark). From 2021 to 2023, Cannata took part in a long-term residency program at the Morean Center for Clay (St. Petersburg, FL). In 2021, Cannata took part in an online residency in collaboration with Indiana University to exhibit at the Museum of Nonconformist Art (St.Petersburg, Russia). Additionally, in 2023, Cannata took part in a month-long residency at Red Lodge Clay Center (Red Lodge, MT). Cannata has participated in group exhibitions throughout the U.S. and internationally in Denmark, Russia, South Korea, and Romania.
Cruz Castillo
Cruz Castillo (b. 1992, Detroit; lives and works in Winter Park, Florida) is a multidisciplinary artist that works in sculpture, performance, and video art. Castillo’s work reflects his interests in the labor process, the politics of production it brings, and his own relationship to the ritual of work that maintains the praxis of social being. Cruz Castillo’s trajectory aims at interrogating the ways in which capitalism works upon the public’s imagination and the impact of this mode of thinking on the reception of an artwork. To do so, Castillo strives to express a tussle between productive and unproductive labor within his work.Cruz Castillo received an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2020 and a BS from the University of Oregon in 2015. A solo exhibition of his work has been held at the Alice and Nahum Lainer Family Gallery, Los Angeles (2021). Selected group exhibitions have been held at the Rollins Art Museum, Winter Park, FL (2026); Casino, Detroit, MI (2025 & 2024); Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, FL (2023); Pfent, Detroit, MI (2022 & 2020); Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA (2019); Godine Family Gallery, Boston, MA (2018); Annex Gallery, Detroit, MI (2017); 333 Midland, Highland Park, MI (2016); Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Eugene, OR (2015); LaVerne Krause Gallery, Eugene, OR (2014). Castillo is a recipient of the Graduate Art Department Scholarship, UCLA (2020); UCLA Regents Stipend Scholarship (2019); Juror’s Choice Award, Cambridge Art Association (2018), and Best in Show, LaVerne Krause Gallery (2014).
Ebenezer Nketsiah Mensah
Ebenezer Nketsiah Mensah is a multidisciplinary artist who recently earned an MFA in Studio Arts from the University of Florida. He previously earned his BFA in Painting and Sculpture from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in 2018. Mensah’s works serve as a powerful narrative exploring complex themes such as labor, identity, memory, sustainability, migration, and materiality through installations, paintings, sculptures, drawings, photo documentaries, and performance. Mensah reflects on his personal experiences as a gold miner and construction worker in Tarkwa, Ghana. Through his art, he highlights critical issues related to these practices, examines the lives of those involved, and considers their impact on communities in Ghana and the U.S., where these activities occur, as well as the associated geopolitics of labor. His work has been exhibited in numerous shows both nationally and internationally, including the Bradbury Art Museum, Gary R. Libby University Gallery, Cotton Club Museum, and 4Most Gallery. He has received several awards and fellowships, including the Windgate Fellowship in 2024, the Grinter Fellowship (which was upgraded to 12 months of funding), the Dean’s Award- First Runner-Up in 2025 at the University of Florida Juried Exhibition, and a recent publication in African Arts by MIT Press. His expanding career continues to make a significant impact on contemporary art.
Lucía Morales
Lucía Morales (b. 1986) in Lima, Perú and lives and works in Miami, Florida. Morales received a Master of Fine Art Degree from Florida International University [2025]. Morales uses textiles, paintings, video and installation to create figurative works that speak to her migratory experience and the transformative moments of her past. Morales’ intention is to make community visible by taking up and creating spaces to be shared. Selected solo exhibitions include “Kaypi, Chaypi, Wakpi” (2024), Miami Beach Visual Art Gallery-FIU, Miami Beach, Florida and “MOAD Artist in Residence Reception” (2025), MDC Kendall Campus Gallery, Kendall, Florida. Selected group exhibitions include “Between Form and Being- 2025 MFA Exhibition” (2025), Frost Art Museum, Miami, Florida, “We Are the Places We Left Behind” (2023), Miami Beach Visual Art Gallery, Miami Beach, Florida, and “Threads & Veins” (2022), Laundromat Art Space, Little Haiti, Florida. Morales is an Oolite Arts Resident Artist (2026), received a Locust Projects WaveMaker Grant (2025), an Associate Artist Residency with Bakehouse Art Complex (2025), MOAD (Museum of Art and Design MDC) Artist Residency at MDC Kendall (2025), an Oolite Arts Home + Away Residency at Mass MoCA (2025), and a Community Recognition from the City of North Miami Beach for entrepreneurial and creative service (2023).
Shayla Marshall
Shayla Marshall (b. 1999, Miami, FL) is a contemporary mixed-media artist now based in between Miami and London, whose work uses world-building techniques to imagine new histories and futures, ones not prewritten for her. Raised in Miami’s culturally rich and predominantly Black neighborhoods, her upbringing informs a celebration of identity and place. At 18 she moved to California, where living outside the familiarity of home exposed her to the broader complexities of being Black in environments not always safe or affirming. Now a full-time artist, Marshall holds her MA in Contemporary Art Practice from the Royal College of Art, the world’s leading university for art & design according to the latest rankings. Her practice pulls disparate moments in time into layered, immersive worlds where storytelling is the foundation, inviting viewers to dwell in the flamboyance and depth of narratives often overlooked. Her work has been shown in institutions such as the Saatchi Gallery (London) and Greenspace Miami (2025). She has completed multiple residencies including at the Bakehouse Art Complex in Miami, and is a recipient of the Miami‑Dade County Artist Grant.
Pathways 2026: The Carlos Malamud Prize
This collaborative partnership between the Rollins Museum of Art and the UCF Art Gallery at the University of Central Florida is juried by an external panel of three professionals from various areas of the art world. Works by the finalists are shown at both venues, creating opportunities for engagement with two of the area’s major academic constituencies and their surrounding communities.