Meet the YoungArts Summer Residency Artists

James Kaun Balo is a Queer Black Haitian-Jamaican multidisciplinary artist and storyteller from Carol City raised by the vast Caribbean communities in Miami, Florida. Balo will receive his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art. As a mentor, creative, community leader and teacher, Balo has served as a spoken word instructor for the Thomas Armour Youth Ballet’s summer program in Miami. In this role, his goals and responsibilities were curated around establishing and reinforcing an arts-intensive curriculum for young students and aiding with their involvement in the arts. Most recently, he has been honored with the 2023 Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art’s Residency Fellowship and named an O, Miami Creative Apprentice.

Balo’s creative work has been experienced internationally in cities such as Miami, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Virginia, Baltimore, New York, Atlanta and Saint Louis Du Nord in Haiti. He has performed and exhibited at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County, YoungArts Gallery and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Sullivan Galleries.

David Correa (b. 1999) is a contemporary artist based out of Miami, Florida. Correa received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Maryland Institute College of Art. His work explores a wide range of themes such as media, art history, individual/shared cultural identities, personal narratives, literature, philosophy and materiality. He uses rhythms of the body as an already processed system that can be modified to express ideas of the human-technological interface and the mystic.

Correa’s work has been exhibited in various group shows by notable institutions and curators such as Untitled Art Fair, YoungArts, Eddie Negrón, Derrick Adams, Robert Chambers, Bridge Red Studios and Current Space. Correa is currently represented by Negrón Pizarro.

Nichole Caridad Hernandez (b.2001) is a Latinx-American interdisciplinary artist from Miami, Florida. Performing as a mytho-poet in the realms of metal, fiber and drawing, Hernandez’s practice serves as a self-undoing. The language of metallurgy forges Hernandez’s autobiographical objects. Blurring the burial between seen and unseen their work confronts and retells their lived experience as one Latinx of the Caribbean diaspora.

They will receive their Bachelor of Fine Arts from The Maryland Institute College of Art in 2024.

Isabel Oliva (b.1999) is a first-generation American, born and raised in South Florida. Oliva is a multidisciplinary artist and textile designer. She completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Fiber Studies with a minor in Experimental Fashion at the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2022. She approaches creating work through a layering of different processes such as drawing, painting, screen printing and weaving and is interested in creating artificial realms inspired by the natural world that allow her to explore ideas of personal mythology, magic realism and ecofeminism.

In 2024, Oliva was selected as an artist in residence at Praxis Fiber Workshop as the Digital Weaving Lab Resident. This residency allows artists to create textiles with TC2, a jacquard loom based on computer technology. Her work has been featured in group exhibitions and experimental fashion shows throughout the United States, including Miami, Florida and Baltimore, Maryland. Her most recent group shows include Megafauna Land Dwellers at the YoungArts Gallery and New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) Miami at Ice Palace Studios during Miami Art Week 2023.