“Second Degree Vision,” the 2024 MFA Thesis exhibition, presents a wide range of artistic practices including photography, sculpture, performance, painting, and film from six unique artists. The work in this exhibition delves into questions of techno-capitalism, meditative processes, interspecies connections, queer identities, and much more. Below is a sneak peak of the work in the exhibition.
Sobia Ahmad’s work explores the transcendental power of everyday experiences, objects, and rituals Through the meditative potential of slow and contemplative processes, her work seeks to understand how slowness and tactility might activate our inner lives and help us experience various spiritual and political dimensions of social and ecological engagement. She will present a 16mm film and a series of photographs.
Steve Alexis’ work is driven by an obsession with materials, using objects to convey emotion and portray a sense of the instinctual nature of his work. Alexis will present a series of sculptures.
Anisha Baid’s work investigates pervasive technologies through an examination of their design, diversity of use, and their relationship with existing cultural imaginaries. Excavating moments from the long project of Silicon Valley techno-capitalism, she contrasts them with memories and anecdotes of computer work from her life in metropolitan India. Baid will present a body of sculptural work along with performative interventions.
Inbar Hagai’s work combines video, virtual reality, and sculpture, as well as experimental films verging on the documentary. Hagai will present a three-channel video that explores interspecies connections, desire, the merging of art and life, and the ethical boundaries inherent in an artistic pursuit involving a non-human subject. Relentlessly tongue-in-cheek, her films are meant to be accompanied by nervous laughter.
Georgia Saxelby’s work explores feminist architectural imaginaries within dreams, fiction, and fairytales. She explores dreamworlds as possible sites of feminist and queer logics with the power to upturn hierarchies, glitch rational time and space and conjure magical modes of seeing and knowing. She will present a series of kiln-formed glass sculptures with video projections that together produce liquid, unstable, spellbinding images as light forms.
London Williams’ work articulates his vision of a Black Queer Utopia and tells the complex dramas of fictional stories, informed by his experience as a gay Black man. Inspired by the safety of his grandmother’s living room as a child, his work creates a space where is identity is unashamed and unapologetic. Williams will present a series of paintings.
Images (clockwise from top left): Sobia Ahmad, Steve Alexis, Anisha Baid, Inbar Hagai, Georgia Saxelby, London Williams.