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Brooklyn-born artist Keisha Scarville on Thursday will unveil two large-scale outdoor work in her hometown that centers on memory, migration and absence.
Scarville, the 2026 recipient of the UOVO Prize, will present a 50-by-50-foot photographic mural on the facade of UOVO’s Bushwick storage facility, alongside Where Salt Meets Black Water, a large-scale outdoor installation on the Iris Cantor Plaza at the Brooklyn Museum. Both projects are free and open to the public, positioning her work within the daily flow of Brooklyn life.
Best known for her interdisciplinary approach to photography, collage and archival material, her Brooklyn Museum installation expands on her series Mama’s Clothes, incorporating garments belonging to her late mother, Alma, alongside black-and-white photographic reproductions installed across the museum’s steps and surrounding walls.
The result is a site-specific work that transforms one of the borough’s most visible cultural spaces into an environment for reflection.
“I would want people to dwell in it,” Scarville said. “That’s my first goal. The way I’ve imagined the space is as a place where people can inhabit and just be.”
Born in Brooklyn to Guyanese parents who immigrated to New York in the late 1960s, Scarville described the opportunity to present work at the Brooklyn Museum as both deeply personal and historically grounded.
“It’s overwhelming, but it also feels full circle,” she said. “My parents were taking me to the Parkway since before I can remember. To have the work be there, it feels surreal, like a dream come true. I knew that I wanted to honor my lineage, and in particular my mom, in this space.”
Located along Eastern Parkway, the museum’s steps function as both an entry point and a gathering site, particularly during public programs and weekend events. Scarville’s installation meets that activity directly, inviting passersby to engage the work without the formal boundaries of a gallery.
“It feels larger than myself,” she said. “It’s an opportunity to speak to Caribbean heritage and allow that space to hold that narrative.”
Rather than directing a singular interpretation, Scarville is more interested in how viewers encounter the work on their own terms. “I’m always interested in what other people gather from it, even before fully understanding what the story is behind it,” she said. “There’s something about that moment of curiosity that matters.”
At the same time, the installation raises broader questions about the role of photography in public space.
“There’s this other space in me that wants individuals to reconsider the ways in which photography can become monument in a different way,” she said. “But the main thing is wanting people to feel held by the images.”
The UOVO Prize arrives at a pivotal moment in Scarville’s career. Like many working artists, she balances teaching with her studio practice while navigating the financial pressures of living in the city.
“This prize is giving me a moment to rest,” she said. “My time is spent between teaching and practice, and that’s not an easy thing to balance. So this allows me to take some time and really focus.”
Scarville is also preparing to release a new book, Passports, centered on her father’s first passport photograph. The project examines migration through bureaucratic image-making and the ways identity is constructed through official documentation.
“It’s an interrogation of photography, particularly bureaucratic photography,” she said. “Thinking through what it means to be an immigrant from the Caribbean in America.”
Scarville also plans to travel to Guyana for an extended research period, continuing to develop work that engages diasporic histories and lived experience.
“Flatbush was the Caribbean for me growing up,” she said. “There are all these stories and histories that are just part of Eastern Parkway, and I want to keep having that conversation.”
