Upcoming Fellowship Recipients
Spring 2026
Spring 2026 - group 1
Architecture
Marcel Sánchez Prieto
Architect and Associate Professor of Architecture, University of San Diego — Mexico/United States
Marcel Sánchez Prieto is an architect and educator whose work bridges architectural design, urban theory, and social practice. He is Principal of CRO Studio and founder of the Transborder Association of Architectural Education (TAAE), a network that connects academic and civic institutions across the U.S.-Mexico border. His design-research spans self-built housing and civic infrastructure, with a focus on spatial justice and the role of architecture in contested geographies.
At Bogliasco, Marcel will expand Transborder Ecologies, a research project and editorial series investigating architectural typologies shaped by migration, displacement, and transborder economies along the U.S.–Mexico border. Through design analysis, visual studies, and editorial development, he will explore how these dynamics generate new spatial conditions, contributing to frameworks for transregional urbanism.
Dance
Alexey Taran
Choreographer — Cuba/United States
Taran is a Cuban choreographer and transdisciplinary artist based in Miami. He is the co-founder of Bistoury Physical Theatre and Film and a 2007 Guggenheim Fellow. His work explores memory, displacement, and abstraction through the fusion of dance, film, and visual media. Alexey is the recipient of awards from the Knight Foundation, New Music USA, NALAC, and multiple Miami Dade Choreographer’s Fellowships.
Mechanical Ballet is a multimedia performance that explores the tension between organic movement and mechanical repetition. Drawing inspiration from early modernist experiments, the work integrates dance, sound, and projected imagery to examine the body’s relationship with labor, automation, and abstraction.
Film/Video
Mohammad Shawky Hassan
Filmmaker, Writer, and Video Artist — Egypt/Germany
Mohammad Shawky Hassan is an Egyptian filmmaker, writer and video artist living and working in Berlin. His video “And on a Different Note” was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York as part of its permanent collection in 2016, and his first feature-length film "Shall I Compare You to a Summer's Day?" premiered at the Berlinale Forum in 2022.
"Watch Before Deletion" is structured as a talk show episode that traces the elusive life of Amar, a fictional queer diva who escapes her native country, Egypt, where she was a revered cultural icon, first to Lebanon and eventually to Germany, where she spent the rest of her life in exile. Her sudden death sparks speculations about her enigmatic life, whose narrative unravels through a cast of celebrity guests consisting of disciples, rivals, critics and alleged lovers.
Literature
Natalka Bilotserkivets
Poet and Essayist — Ukraine
Natalka Bilotserkivets is a Ukrainian poet and essayist. She is the author of seven books and many poems anthologized and translated in two dozen languages. A long-time editor of Ukrainska Kultura monthly, she has been a freelancer since 2011. Two of her books were published in English – Subterranean Fire (2021), and Eccentric Days of Hope and Sorrow (2022); the latter one was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Derek Walcott prize in 2022.
While in Bogliasco, Natalka will work on Lost & Found – a poetical rediscovery, recollection and re-appropriation of the usual, perhaps trivial things of our daily life that became, because of the war, unavailable, inaccessible, and therefore especially dear. It should be a meta-narrative about the way of life and “habits of the heart” that the millions of people strive to maintain; about the human cells and networks, and civic solidarity that was targeted by the invaders but, instead, was solidified and re-invigorated.
Literature
Mykola Riabchuk
Writer and Essayist — Ukraine
Mykola Riabchuk is a Ukrainian prose writer and essayist, the honorary president of the Ukrainian PEN-center, and a co-founder and member of the editorial board of the Kyiv-based Krytyka monthly. He has penned a dozen books that have been translated into several languages (Polish, French, German, English, Serbian, and Hungarian) and received several national and international awards. His last book in English is titled At the Fence of Metternich’s Garden - Essays on Europe, Ukraine, and Europeanization
While in Bogliasco, Mykola will be working on a collection of essays and short stories titled “Repossessions”, which explores the humanitarian aspects of the ongoing Russian war in Ukraine given the incredible suffering, destruction, and “dispossessions” inflicted on peaceful citizens by a military assault. At a meta-discursive level, it seeks to inspire a symbolic healing of wounds and retrieval of losses by means of remembering and reimagining, reconnection and reconstruction, cherishing feelings of human affinity and solidarity.
Music
Andrée Greenwell
Composer and Performance Maker — Australia
Andrée Greenwell is a composer and performance maker from Sydney, Australia. As artistic director and composer of Green Room Music Andrée has created unique multidisciplinary, music theatre, chamber opera works for nearly three decades. Her chamber opera "Three Marys" with libretto by Christine Evans was presented by Sydney Opera House as part of the 50th anniversary celebrations in 2023. Andrée participated in the Women Opera Makers Workshop of the Académie, Festival of Aix-en-Provence, 2024.
Andrée is working on the score for a video-oratorio "ORE CHOIR: the Lava on Iceland", based upon the book of erasure poetry by US writer Katy Didden (Tupelo Press, 2022). Didden’s book is inspired by the famous volcanic eruption of 1783 which precipitated change in the earth’s surface climate. In "ORE CHOIR", the ancient and imposing lava will sing to us from the past, present, and into the future, providing a unique perspective at a time of urgent ecological focus.
Theater
Dan Froot
Performer, Actor, Director, and Writer — United States
Dan Froot’s music/dance/theater works have appeared at the London ICA, Harare International Festival (Zimbabwe), Festival de Dança de Londrina (Brazil), Joyce Theater & Symphony Space (NYC), Edinburgh Fringe, and many other places. His work delves into the emotional entanglements of hunger, plastics pollution, and the gun debate. Awards include a Bessie (NY Dance & Performance Award), a City of Los Angeles Artist Fellowship, and a playwriting fellowship from Foundation for Jewish Culture.
One Word is a multimedia ensemble theater project investigating the individual choices and motivations driving the global plastics crisis. Drawing on archival and ethnographic sources, Dan Froot & Company “reenact” freely imagined pivotal moments in the lives of plastics industry innovators and insiders, while giving voice to the communities most impacted.
Theater
John Pierson
Actor, Director, Writer, and Teacher — United States
John Pierson is an actor, director, writer, and teacher living and working in St. Louis. He is the chair of the Performing Arts Department at John Burroughs School and the Associate Artistic Director of St. Louis Actors' Studio. A longtime member of Actors Equity and SAG/AFTRA, John is an award-winning stage actor and director, and as part of the LaBute New Theater Festival, he has directed several world premieres, both in St. Louis and Off Broadway. Burris Creek, his first feature screenplay is currently being shopped around by Chris Bremner, a screenwriter and producer based at Columbia Pictures.
At Boglisasco, John will be finishing up work on a collection of monologues and short plays he is writing specifically for contemporary middle school voices. He has also received a commission from St. Louis Actors' Studio to write a new play, and he will be starting work on that script, a story of how a formerly incarcerated man and his family confront his re-entry after being released.
Visual Arts
Valentina Pini
Visual Artist — Switzerland
Valentina Pini (1982, lives in Zurich) studied art in Geneva (HEAD), at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, and completed an MA in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art in London. Recent exhibitions include Calibrando l’occhio at Museo Vincenzo Vela, Ligornetto, and Water into Wine at Lullin + Ferrari Gallery, Zürich. In 2024, she received support from UBS Kulturstiftung, and in 2025, she was awarded the Zürich Art Grant. Since 2019 she is co-director of the artist-run-space Spazio Lampo, Chiasso.
Valentina’s artistic practice centers on the perception of matter, challenging our understanding of material reality and the permanence of things. In Bogliasco, she will create a new series of watercolor drawings and monotypes by experimenting with and exploring the medium of printmaking. She will press edible materials such as fruits and vegetables together with chemical substances, generating unexpected visual and material outcomes. By encouraging technical “errors,” she aims to inspire new ideas and approaches.