5, Thesis Exhibition Opening Reception

There is nothing quite like art school. For two or three years of your life, you immerse yourself in the challenge of self expression through visual means. Usually, this takes a highly personal turn, since how can you truly know what you are trying to say without taking the time to get to know yourself and what drives you? You have access to the best facilities, professors give their focused attention to your growth, and experts in the field come to tell you more about what awaits on the other side of the degree. When you have done it right, you spend most of your hours quasi obsessed with the ideas that drive your work. Your peers are invested in your artistic growth, and you learn how to both give and take critique. When the process works as it should, you emerge a stronger artist and more interesting person. Seeing yourself in a long-running river of creative output that came before you, the challenge is to contribute something that both acknowledges what has been done before, but more importantly, it is to add something new to the discourse. The students of the SVA MFA in Photography, Video, and Related Media have done this and more, pouring hours into their projects and thoughtfully defending their work to earn their degrees. I am encouraged at the quality of their work and inspired by their commitment to their art practice. While varied in form and content, the projects pull strongly towards understanding cultural, generational, and familial relationships, and interpolating personal experiences to more universal understandings of each artist's place in the world. In the current reordering of the globe and a dawning era of cultural isolationism, 2025 will likely be remembered as a rupture point that delineates a before and after in terms of artist’s freedom of expression. While they may not have imagined it as first year students, the SVA MFA class of 2025 stands as a testament to the excellence of American higher education. These students should feel exceptionally proud of their accomplishment. I trust that their vision, creativity, and resilience will help carry us through what is to come. By Noelle Théard, senior photo editor, The New Yorker Alejandro Abarca, The Language of the Gun Shaohan Fang, En Route Lia-Alexi Manfredi, FREE SKATE Sunmin Park, She is my shadow, I am her echo Ari Temkin, The Index; The Last Two Jews More Info below.