Recent MFA Graduate, Fen Root, Selected for SOMA Summer 2026 in Mexico City

The UNM CFA Dean’s Office and Department of Art are pleased to announce that fen root has been awarded the UNM SOMA Summer Travel Grant. This grant is awarded to a UNM graduate student to attend SOMA Summer 2026, a 4-week program in Mexico City. The $4,000 USD grant, plus an award by SOMA ($800 USD) is applied to the cost of attending the SOMA Summer program.

SOMA is a non-profit civil association founded in Mexico City in 2009 by a group of artists, dedicated to cultural exchange and the teaching of the arts. It’s a space by artists, for artists, promoting reflection and discussion on contemporary art at both national and international levels. Through its three programs, SOMA Educational Program, SOMA Summer, and SOMA Wednesday, SOMA fosters dialogue and collaboration between artists and cultural agents from diverse backgrounds, while exploring the aesthetic, political, and social impacts of art production.

Fen Root is a multimedia artist based in Albuquerque (born 1995 in Washington, D.C.) whose work stages playful and critical encounters with technologies of representation. Working across performance, sculpture, photography, video, and installation, Root creates environmental and standalone works that investigate the social and psychic dynamics of territory, and the mutuality of identity, self, and place. Fen’s practice has its roots in performance, specifically postmodern dance and somatic movement. Combined with extensive research into Black feminist geography, media regimes, and political ecology, her practice has expanded to the realms of sculpture, video, and installation, often taking Blackness as a starting point to examine the limits of ontology, opacity, and nomadic subjectivity.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
EXPLORE the work of fen root by following on Instagram @altrbody.
LEARN MORE at https://somamexico.org/