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Announcing the 2026 Meridian Scholar in Residence:
Mabel Poblet Pujol
The Department of Art + Design at the University of Tampa is pleased to announce that Mabel Poblet Pujol (b. 1986; Cienfuegos, Cuba), a mixed- and multi-media artist based in Madrid and Havana, will join the department as the 2026 Meridian Scholar in Residence from April 6 to 17, 2026.
During the two-week residency, Poblet Pujol, renowned for her immersive reinterpretations of pop and kinetic art, will engage UTampa students, faculty and the Tampa Bay community in her new and collaborative project, Fragments of Memory. This work, composed of mirrored surfaces as well as light projections sourced from participants’ photographs, videos and actions, imagines a “suspended territory where the intimate and the collective meet.” In addition to producing this immersive, site-specific work with the UTampa Art and Design community, the artist’s tenure will include a public lecture, student workshop and exhibition of select works in the Ferman Center for the Arts.
More detailed information about dates and times of related programming will be made available to the public in Spring 2026.
The artist resides and works between Havana and Madrid. She graduated from the Instituto Superior de Artes de La Habana (ISA, 2012) and the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes San Alejandro (2007). She was part of the Proyecto-Taller Conducta led by Cuban artist Tania Bruguera and is a member of the Unión Nacional de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba (UNEAC). She has participated in more than 23 solo exhibitions and over 100 collective exhibitions. In 2018, she received recognition for an Exceptional Career from the Embassy of Mexico in Cuba. In 2017, she was invited to be part of the Cuban Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.
Her most significant solo exhibitions include: NonBody is an Island (Brownstone Foundation, Paris, 2024), What Does All the Blue in the Sea Have That the Sky Doesn’t? (PAAP Pan American Art Project, Florida, 2024), Where Oceans Meet (Chanel Nexus Hall, Tokyo, Japan, and at the Kyoto Museum, Japan, as part of the Kyotographie 2023, Cuando le hablo al otro le convoco (Odalys Gallery, Madrid, Spain, 2022), Fragments of Memory (Isabelle Lesmeister Gallery, Regensburg, Germany, 2021), FlashBack (ArteMorfosis Gallery, Zurich, Switzerland, 2018), Flotabilidad (Habana Gallery, Cuba, 2018), Marea Alta (Mitte Gallery, Callao, Peru, 2017), Diario de Viaje (CO Gallery, Santiago de Chile, 2017), Patria 12th Havana Biennial (Villa Manuela, Cuba, 2015), **Reverso** (Tomás y Valientes Art Center, Madrid, Spain, 2013), Situación Límite (Raquel Ponce Gallery, Madrid, Spain, 2013), Reunificación Familiar, collateral to the 11th Havana Biennial (Morro-Cabaña, 2012), and Today My Voice Has Sound (Villa Manuela Gallery, Havana, 2012).
She has participated in collective exhibitions such as Under the Spell of the Palm Tree: The Rice Collection of Cuban Art (Harm Museum of Art, University of Florida, USA, 2023), **Kunst Cuba** (Ludwig Forum, 2017, Aachen, Germany), Artxiomas (Museum of the Americas, Washington D.C., USA, 2016), Complicated Beauty: Contemporary Cuban Art (Tampa Museum of Art, Florida, USA, 2016), 4th Biennial of the End of the World (Mar del Plata, Argentina, 2014), After the Void (Nomads Ministry, Edison House, London, 2013), Art de la Grande Île des Caraibes (Le Manoir de Cologny, Cultural Center, Geneva, Switzerland, 2013), Knowing How to Shoot, and Shooting Well (Villa Manuela Gallery, Havana, 2011), and Cuban Women Artists (Cuban Studies Center, New York, 2010).
Her work is part of important public and private collections, such as the Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA), the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tampa, the CIFO Cisneros Fontanals Foundation in the USA, the Gilbert Brownstone Foundation in France, and recently, the Museum of Fine Arts in Cuba acquired one of her works for the permanent collection. Her works are also in the Steven Certilman collection in the USA and the Luciano Méndez collection in Spain.
In 2024 and 2019, she was selected for the artist residency at Djerassi Resident Artists, Woodside, California, USA. In 2014, she received the Noemi Award, which provided her with a three-month residency at the Brownstone Foundation, Paris.
About Meridian Scholar Program
The Meridian Scholar Program (formerly STUDIO-f) is an innovative program designed to host nationally and internationally recognized artists, designers, creative practitioners and researchers for a 10-day residency with the University of Tampa’s Art and Design Department. The selected resident will be invited to utilize the department’s state-of-the art facilities located within the University’s Ferman Center for the Arts and R. K. Bailey Art Studios. Selected residents will also be expected to involve UTampa studio art, graphic design, art therapy and museum studies students in the preparation, production and post-production work of the residency.
Applications for the Meridian Scholar Program are currently closed. Please check back in May 2026 for the next application cycle.
Visiting artists included Sam Gilliam, Joyce J. Scott, Roberto Juarez, Miriam Schapiro, Audrey Flack, Pedro Perez, Ed Paschke, Willy Heeks, John Walker, Tom Lieber, Larry Poons, Sam Messer, James McGarrell, Robert Rahway Zakanitch, Stephen Greene, Katherine Porter, Hollis Sigler, Vitaly Komar, Alexander Melamid and Louisa Chase.
Meridian Scholar Program is located in Bailey Arts Studio, 310 N. Boulevard, at the University of Tampa campus in downtown Tampa. For more information or to receive a schedule of upcoming events, please contact Jocelyn Boigenzahn at (813) 253-6217, jboigenzahn@ut.edu.
