IMA MFA Spring Thesis Show

Pricks and Pills

by Anna Charles

installation + website

“Pricks and Pills” offers a glimpse into the lives of members of the Caribbean community in New York navigating the challenges of diabetes. Through intimate conversations with the artist who is on a similar journey, this installation reveals their struggles and triumphs with the disease and serves as a testament to the restorative benefits of openly discussing rather than stigmatizing it.

Advisors: Andrew Lund, Betty Yu, Natalie Conn

Reflections of Little Red Dot

by Chloé Lee

installation

Reflections of Little Red Dot is a mixed reality experience that animates the artist’s personal archive of recordings from Singaporeans in 2015, the year of their nation’s 50th birthday. This liminal space reimagines the documentary film form, guiding us to walk through atmospheres of Singapore, where we hear personal stories amidst rapid development and erasure of historical and personal sites. AI projections connect past and future landscapes, empowering us to shape our narratives and environment.

Advisors: Kara Lynch, Zach Nader, Andrew Lund

Container Film

by Dena Kopolovich

film 7 min

Container Film delves into the primal origins of storytelling. By contemplating the symbolism of carrying, this conceptual short draws from a blend of anthropological, religious, and artistic sources to offer a unique lens through which to access human history and experience.

Advisors: Michael Gitlin, Andrew Demirjian, Vito Adriaensens

Bengal Memory

by Fahim Hamid

film 33 min

A Bangladeshi American undertakes a journey to learn about Bangladesh’s liberation war and his family’s immigration to America, while grappling with the cognitive dissonance of belonging to both countries. Through personal interviews, archival materials, and declassified recordings, the film exposes a forgotten genocide and the controversial role the U.S. played in it. 

Advisors: Reiko Tahara, Sean Hanley, Kelly Anderson

Remission

by John Mastriano

film 37 min

The filmmaker’s shared passion for the natural world creates a connection with his father that transcends life and death and forms the foundation for his own transition into fatherhood.

Advisors: Andrew Lund, Reiko Tahara, Iris Devins

Symbiosis

by T.X.

Installation presentation

A virtual realm where humans and non-humans collectively shape the landscape

Advisors: Matthew Gantt, Jesse Harding

Atrox Atrox Res

by Ty Turley

installation, dance

An interactive augmented reality dance experience that embodies the accumulation of detritus in our social fabric today. The project asks the audience to consider the quality and consequence of their digital/physical interactions.

Advisors: Andrew Lund, Michael Gitlin, Maura Donohue

May the Soil Be Everywhere

by Yehui Zhao

film 100 min

Set against a backdrop of war, famine, and rapid urbanization, May the Soil Be Everywhere weaves an intimate four-generational story about farming, heritage, and oral history. The filmmaker unearths her family’s enduring bond with their long-forgotten ancestral village, hidden deeply in the vast mountain range of Loess Plateau. Crediting land as a quiet witness of history, the film depicts the revolutionary communal love between land and its people. 

Advisors: Reiko Tahara, Andrew Lund, Zach Nader

Erase the Record

by Anne Sofie Nørskov

film 30 min

A young immigrant embarks on a magical odyssey through a maze of media to unearth the fragments of her vanished memories and elusive cultural identity.

Advisors: Andrew Lund, Michael Gitlin, Ramin Serry

RGB Root Matriz Color Dance

by Danielle Gauthier

installation presentation

RGB Root Matriz Color Dance is an interactive space that tells bodies how to move in words and dance in color. Creating poetry that responds to movement the piece explores somatic relationships between gesture, language, hue, and sound. Coiled, heated. Unravel your dense energy to the surface for your motivation and usage with this multi-modal guided dance. Play with your aesthetic expression with poetic cues that inspire creative movement.

Advisors: Andrew Demirjian, Rachel Stevens, Nya Patrinos

Oblique 

by Edward Kijowski

installation

A multi-sensory story of fragmentation in sound and light rendered by an obtuse hexagon arrangement of speakers and associated lighting prompts. The oblique direction of the soundwaves creates sonic sculpturing that propels observers into an active state. 

Advisors: Ricardo Miranda, Andrew Demirjian, Hans Tammen

Feeble Transmitters

by Indranil Choudhury

installation

Feeble Transmitters is a series of sound sculptures that occupy a space between manufactured objects and organic forms. Drawing from the material culture of industrial design in audio, the work is a reflection on people’s relationships and rituals with consumer technology.

Advisors: Hans Tammen, Andrew Demirjian, Lila Nazemian

Chemical Meadows

Nate Dorr

film 21 min

How do we observe the deeper marks of the Anthropocene? A visceral 16mm landscape film, Chemical Meadows correlates photochemistry and water chemistry in the post-industrial urban wilderness of the New Jersey Meadowlands. Filming waterways long subjected to human misuse and washing the undeveloped footage in these same waters directly etches hidden histories into the image.

Advisors: Zach Nader, Michael Gitlin, Rachel Stevens

Time’s Radiant Keepers

by Tara Aliya Kesavan

installation

An exhibition of paintings that chronicle the emergence of the image of the urban, working woman in India; along with ceramic sculptures that mix soft curves that evoke the body with the sharp edges and openings of technological devices.

Advisors: Zach Nader, Andrew Demirjian, Lila Nazemian

The Routes

by Wei-Ta Chen

film 50 min

Set in New York, this semi-autobiographical documentary portrays immigrant artist Hung-Ju delicately balancing creative challenges and nostalgia, while also exploring the filmmaker’s parallel experiences through personal reflections on ties to family and homeland as well as the nature of filmmaking.

Advisors: Sean Hanley, Poyen Wang, Kelly Anderson