The Center for Art, Research and Alliances (CARA) has announced the two recipients of its fourth CARA Fellowship: installation artist Pepon Osorio and photographer Ming Smith. Each will receive an unrestricted award of $75,000 and individually tailored support from the New York-based centre across the two-year term, running from 2027 to 2029.

The fellowship is aimed at mid-to-late-career artists and artists' legacies whose work offers alternatives to established historical perspectives. Osorio, born in 1955 in Santurce, Puerto Rico, is best known for large-scale installations that draw on Puerto Rican and Latino life, while Smith, born in 1947 in Detroit, has spent five decades making photographs that move between documentary observation and dreamlike, layered imagery. Both were chosen from more than 40 nominations put forward by art workers, artists and writers, including Jeffrey Gibson and Nari Ward.

The fellowship was developed with support from United States Artists and is funded by the Karsh Family Foundation. Previous recipients include Valerie J. Maynard, Napoleon Jones-Henderson, E'wao Kagoshima and Beatriz Santiago Munoz, while the current fellows are Duwawisioma (Victor Masayesva Jr.) and Pippa Garner, honoured posthumously. For CARA, the award is as much about infrastructure as money: over the two years it works closely with each fellow to build lasting support structures around practices that have long shaped the field without always receiving institutional backing to match.