THE BROOKLYN MUSEUM awarded the 2026 UOVO Prize to artist Keisha Scarville (b. 1975). The annual prize recognizes emerging Brooklyn-based artists with public art commissions and a $25,000 cash grant.
Scarville works across photography, collage, and archival materials. Engaging themes of migration, memory, and absence, her work reflects her family heritage and experiences as part of the diverse and expansive Caribbean diaspora community in Brooklyn. The artist was born in Brooklyn to parents who immigrated to New York from Guyana in the 1960s.
Paying homage to her late mother Alma, “Where Salt Meets Black Water” is Scarville’s first large-scale installation. The work is adapted from a series called Mama’s Clothes. Pauline Vermare, Phillip and Edith Leonian Curator of Photography at Brooklyn Museum, curated the installation, which opens on the Brooklyn Museum’s Iris Cantor Plaza on May 8.
The honor also includes a 50 x 50-foot public mural installed on the facade of UOVO’s facility in Bushwick, Brooklyn, through October. UOVO provides luxury storage and logistics for fine art, fashion, and wine and supports the artist prize in partnership with the Brooklyn Museum.
“We’re thrilled to present the UOVO Prize to Keisha Scarville, whose work so powerfully reflects the lived experiences of Brooklyn’s Caribbean community—an essential part of our borough’s past, present, and future,” Vermare said in a statement. “It feels deeply meaningful for this work to be accessible to all on the Museum’s plaza, welcoming everyone into the Museum through stories of memory, migration, and belonging.”
“We’re thrilled to present the UOVO Prize to Keisha Scarville, whose work so powerfully reflects the lived experiences of Brooklyn’s Caribbean community—an essential part of our borough’s past, present, and future.” — Curator Pauline Vermare
Scarville’s work has been exhibited widely and acquired by major museums. Her residencies include Light Work, Baxter Street at CCNY, and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She was also the inaugural recipient of the Saltzman Prize in Photography (2024). She is a visiting professor in the Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies at Harvard University and on faculty at Parsons School of Design in New York
A jury of Brooklyn Museum curators selected Scarville for the UOVO Prize. She is the six recipient. Previous winners include Baseera Khan, Oscar yi Hou, Suneil Sanzgiri, Melissa Joseph, and photographer John Edmonds, the inaugural recipient in 2020.
“As a Brooklyn native, I am deeply honored to be this year’s recipient of the UOVO Prize,” Scarville said in a statement. “My images, inspired by my Caribbean heritage, occupy a space between two lands. I look forward to realizing this installation at the Brooklyn Museum, a cultural cornerstone of New York City. This prize represents a dream fulfilled and brings me great joy to celebrate the Caribbean diaspora in Brooklyn.” CT
IMAGE: Keisha Scarville, 2025. | Photo: Ana Dias, Courtesy Brooklyn Museum
BOOKSHELF
“Passports,” Keisha Scarville’s forthcoming publication from Mack Books (May 2026) explores a body of work inspired by her father’s earliest passport photo and features a new text by Tina M. Campt. Scarville’s first monograph “lick of tongue, rub of finger, on soft wound” was published by Mack Books in 2023. Now sold out, the title was shortlisted in the 2023 Paris Photo–Aperture PhotoBook Awards in the first photobook category.
