BROOKLYN, NY.- Melissa Joseph (born United States,1980), recipient of the 2025 UOVO Prize, will activate the Brooklyn Museum’s Iris Cantor Plaza with Melissa Joseph: Tender this summer. Opening June 6, the site-specific outdoor installation emphasizes the power of human connection through scenes of gentleness and vulnerability. Tender will be on view through October 2025.

Featuring an array of quotidian scenes of people embracing, laughing, eating, and resting, Tender invites visitors to reflect upon similar experiences from their own lives. Joseph produced each vignette through needle-felting before photographing the works. She enlarged the images to capture the intricate detail and texture of the works on a scale that invites new ways of looking and engaging with the material.

For this project, Joseph drew inspiration from Renaissance imagery that has informed her distinctive fiber-painting practice. Echoing the geometric patterns found on the floors of the sixteenth-century Santa Maria Assunta Cathedral in Siena, Italy, Joseph’s portraits will frame the plaza steps in hexagonal arrangements. Having first encountered the cathedral floors as an art student in 2001, Joseph has spent the last few years researching their rich history. The Sienese floors were created through a laborious stone-carving process that parallels Joseph’s meticulous needle-felting technique, which will intrigue and inspire Brooklyn Museum visitors.

As the recipient of this year’s UOVO Prize, Joseph will also unveil a mural on the facade of UOVO’s Brooklyn facility in Bushwick. Last October, she was selected by a team of Brooklyn Museum curators from among the artists featured in The Brooklyn Artists Exhibition, a major group show supported by UOVO featuring Brooklyn-based artists. Her work Olive’s Hair Salon (2023) was included in the exhibition, and her work Getting Reuben’s tuition book (2023) was acquired by the Museum last year.

“I don’t take the opportunity to share my work with the public lightly. In a moment where there are new and significant challenges facing us as a society, it feels even more urgent to create space for tenderness,” says Joseph.

“We’re excited that visitors will be welcomed by Melissa Joseph’s work before they even step inside the Museum. This public installation highlights our plaza as a space of connection, reflecting the themes of human interaction and community that are central to Joseph’s practice,” says Kimberli Gant, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Brooklyn Museum. “We’re grateful for UOVO’s support to showcase Melissa Joseph: Tender to our audiences.”

Melissa Joseph: Tender is organized by Kimberli Gant, Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art, and Indira A. Abiskaroon, Curatorial Assistant, Modern and Contemporary Art, Brooklyn Museum.