Congratulations to MFA student Dominique Muñoz on being named a 2025 Denis Roussel Fellow at the Center for Fine Art Photography!
Denis Roussel, 41, was a talented and dedicated photographer who was beloved by his family, friends, and the photography community. Denis was lost to bile duct cancer on July 12, 2017.
This annual award honors Roussel’s memory and legacy. Denis inspired many to take risks in their work, step outside the boundaries of traditional images, and realize the magic of photography.
The fellowship is to nurture artists in their artistic journey and is entirely funded by Denis’s family and friends.
Dominique Muñoz is a visual artist who uses photographic language to engage with personal and collective memory. He examines how we archive ourselves through images and spaces, shaping our sense of being. He challenges traditional ideas of masculinity by unpacking objects from his childhood home, highlighting the undercurrents of matriarchal labor and care. Family blankets become the foundation for weaving new patterns into his work – a remixing of traditions and culture shaped by migrations to the United States. Working with found objects, images, printmaking, and performance, his practice centers on themes of assimilation, desire, family, and memory.
Dominique is from Falls Church, Va. He received his BFA in Photography and Film from VCUarts in 2015 and was the inaugural Photographer-in-Residence for the 1906 Group, where he highlighted the collective effort involved in construction. In 2017, he had his first solo exhibition at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C.
This past summer, Dominique was selected as one of Ox-Bow’s School of Art Summer Fellows and served as a guest curator for The Curated Fridge. His work has been shown in numerous galleries, including Candela Books & Gallery in Richmond, VA., Greenville Museum of Art in Greenville, NC., Silver Eye Center for Photography in Pittsburgh, PA., and Soft Times Gallery in San Francisco, CA,
Dominique is currently pursuing his MFA in Studio Art at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a Merit Fellow, where he continues his research into family archives, colonial histories, and the lore of his Guatemalan ancestors.