Skye Jalal ’25 Awarded a 2025 Wat­son Fel­low­ship

Skye Jalal '25 has been awarded a 2025 Thomas J. Wat­son Fel­low­ship, a one-year grant that funds pur­pose­ful, inde­pen­dent explo­ration out­side the Unit­ed States.

"My project centers one question: What strategies are community organizers and institutions employing globally to foster humanity-affirming land relationships that heal this estrangement?" says Jalal, a studio art and art history major from Atlanta, Georgia. "I'm going to be traveling to Ghana, Kenya, Ecuador, and Mexico, studying how Black people across the world can foster what I refer to in my application as humanity-affirming relationships to land."

In addition to the Watson Fellowship, Jalal, who says she would "love to become a practicing artist after graduation," is receiving the Louis Sudler Prize in the Arts, an annual award given to a graduating senior "who has created or performed with uncommon distinction in dance, theatre, creative writing, music performance or composition, photography or the visual arts."

Describe your Watson Fellowship project.

Saidiya Hartman writes, "The most universal definition of the slave is a stranger." My Watson project seeks to both understand how this estrangement manifests in relation to land and to devise actionable solutions for eliminating it. I'm interested in how the rupture of diaspora impacts how Black people are able to relate to their surrounding environments-conceptually, spiritually, and in a tangible sense through farming and policy making.

I'm approaching the topic from a variety of angles, including working with a genealogical research center in Ghana that assists African Americans in tracing their ancestry to the continent of Africa; doing a series of farm stays with local farmers in Kenya; and working with an organization in Ecuador that assesses issues in the American social service system to create better community models that are ecologically viable and self-sustaining.

In what ways does what you'll be doing because of the Watson build on your existing work-and in what ways does it open new pathways for you?

Looking back, I can see that this subject has been on my mind for a long time. My Mellon Mays thesis work centers the art and architectural histories of Black churches in South Atlanta. That research has led me to a lot of deep study surrounding segregationist theories of space and subversive cartographies. I've spent a lot of time in college considering how Black people in the South inhabit space, and contend with the myriad environmental and political challenges that are set for our demise. As a teenager in Atlanta, I came of age in the era of Cop City, which has had a profound impact on my thinking surrounding the quotidian violence that Black people experience simply by existing in space.

I also have been working through the theme of land relationships in my photographic practice for the past couple of years. One photo series in particular that I've been working on is a series of family portraits and images of the Hawaiian landscape. exploring my ties to Hawaiian land, while also reflecting on my family's occupation of Yamacraw land in Georgia. I explore what it means for myself as a Black woman to be connected to the land of Hawaii, examining how my personal displacements have led to the displacement of others. I think that my Watson Project is situated somewhere between these two bodies of work, and both have laid the foundation for me to begin considering this new set of questions.

How did Oberlin shape or influence you to pursue this fellowship?

I came to Oberlin not really intending to make art or do research, and now my life seems to be oriented around those two things for the foreseeable future. Both the studio art and art history departments are filled with incredible faculty who have both recognized my potential and helped me to construct a vision of what my future work could look like.

My two advisors, Professor of Studio Art and Photography Pipo Nguyen-Duy and Mildred C. Jay Professor of Medieval Art History Erik Inglis '89, in particular have gone above and beyond in supporting me the past four years. However, in general, I have had such a positive and encouraging experience working with my professors in both departments, and it's probably the most profound way that Oberlin has impacted me.

Activities in which you were involved at Oberlin: Editor-in-chief of The Grape, Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow, President of Art Students Committee, Photo Lab Monitor

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