This year’s 2023 Masters of Fine Arts thesis candidates hail from multiple countries. Their approaches to subject; methods of making; and unique combination of personal, political, and historical narratives challenge our assumptions so that we can collectively create a better tomorrow.

Seductive and sobering, Hadis Karami’s delicate multimedia work honors centuries-old women’s handicrafts while calling attention to the cruel practices and beliefs still enforced in her home country of Iran. Through her work Karami memorializes Iranian women murdered by their family members, and celebrates those claiming and redefining their own identity. 

 In Kierra LoRayne’s picturesque landscapes, botanical species reign supreme. Magical, surreal, and fantastical, LoRayne uses her memories and experiences to document and construct a new painterly immersive world. In these scenes micro becomes macro, and the familiar is unknown, encouraging us to refocus and rediscover the natural domain around us.

 Lucie March takes us into secret, otherworldly spaces. Juxtaposing sensuous, private views of female bodies and exposed, barren, man-made landscapes, her photographs (c)overtly reveal utopian and dystopian patterns, relationships, and states of being. Through March’s lens, a world that is simultaneously intimate and monumental comes into focus.  

Spanning three generations and two continents, Yuxiao Mu’s photographic constellation documents and, at times, embodies her grandmother’s dementia. The work was created in a tender collaboration between mothers and daughters – Mu guiding her mother in making pictures of Mu’s grandmother, which were then sent back to the artist. Mu’s edits of that pictorial dialogue reveals shared moods, sensations, and rituals. The result is a poetic tribute both questioning and commemorating our existence.

Piyu Somani’s atmospheric two-channel film is a quiet, wistful love letter. Sent to a love in a past home, the protagonist explores ways to share life, knowing that images and words cannot fully bridge the divide. A simple musical scale draws us closer to what we think is knowable, but just as the viewer must fill in gaps in the film, the love letter too, is ultimately elusive.

The theme of “home” is the common thread throughout the sculptural work of Jialin (Tiffany) Wang. Exploring definitions of home and homesickness, belonging and displacement, Wang utilizes ceramics, which she identifies as the medium that both symbolizes her identity as a foreigner as well as her history. 

– Lisa Tung, Executive Director, MassArt Art Museum (MAAM)

May 2023

View recording of 2023 MFA Thesis Artist Talks here.