MassArt x SoWa

Carry/Held, the 2026 Summer MFA Thesis Exhibition, brings together eight artists whose practices investigate the reciprocal relationship between what we carry through life and what, in turn, sustains, shapes, and holds us. 

For Sam ARDREY, family histories are embedded in material itself, weaving together fiber traditions, industrial forms, and ceramic illusion to examine lineage, craft, and generational trauma. Alyssa DRISCOLL transforms photographs, textiles, and archival objects into tactile meditations on grief, revealing how absence reshapes memory while preserving enduring bonds. Through experimentation with unstable materials, Julie FEDOLAK embraces failure and transformation as sites of adaptation and becoming. Allen REDWING shifts the conversation outward, considering the institutional narratives and technological systems that shape collective memory, visibility, and belief.

The personal and the political continue to intertwine in the work of Tyler SORGMAN, whose uncanny, symbolic worlds navigate mental illness, queer identity, and fractured familial relationships. Arecis TIBURCIO ZANE explores womanhood, inheritance, and maternal bonds through layered portraits where memory remains fluid and identity is continually negotiated. Drawing from the Chihuahuan Desert, Diane VERA-UREÑO reflects on displacement, ecological resilience, and belonging, revealing parallels between environmental and human survival. Finally, Jahnae WYATT reclaims historical representation through portraits that center Black femme identity, spirituality, and self-definition within and beyond Western artistic traditions.

Together, these artists ask what it means to carry memory, history, grief, culture, and identity—and how those very forces, whether inherited, chosen, or resisted, become the structures that hold us. Carry/Held invites viewers to consider this ongoing exchange: the weight we bear, the communities and histories that sustain us, and the transformative possibilities found between them.

-Felicia Scott Flint | July 2026

Director, MassArt x SoWa