IMA MFA Spring 2025 Thesis Show

May 16 – 18
film, animation, audio, installation, multimedia, collage, interactive

Hunter College, North Building, 4th Floor Lang Auditorium + TV Studio
Entrance: 69th Street between Lexington and Park Avenues

RSVP here

Thesis Projects:

Body of Light  
by Lucy Adams
multichannel video installation

A two channel video installation exploring the life and legacy of artists’ model and actress Audrey Munson. Munson posed for sculptures all over New York City in the early 1900’s before she dramatically disappeared from public life. Through archival material and contemporary footage, Body of Light revives and reimagines her story.
advisors: Andrew Demirjian, Alex Mallis, Christina Freeman

Lonely Rooms
by Yaching Cheung
installation  

Needs a description
advisors: André Daughtry, Andrew Demirjian, Jon Levin

Cut From The Margins  
by Prisca Edwards
film + collages

Six individuals. One diagnosis. In Cut From The Margins, people living with endometriosis gather for an art-centered workshop. Through collage and conversation, they transform isolating medical experiences into paths of connection and collective healing.
advisors: Kelly Anderson, Walis Johnson, Lynne Sachs

Coffee Bindings  
by M. Ermolenko
installation + zine

An antique and jewelry repair shop becomes a home to a coffee reading that transports you between time and space, casting a spell between this world and the next through each cup you drink. Utilizing physical, digital, handmade linocut, and family archival, Coffee Bindings explores our connections to memory, space, and the diaspora connection when navigating family history and the aftermath of loss.
advisors: Reiko Tahara, Andrew Demirjian, Sha Sha Feng

Island Child
by Rachel Jungeun Oh
multimedia installation

Island Child is an immersive audiovisual installation exploring memory, dreams, and cultural identity through experimental animation, projection mapping, and spatial sound. By highlighting traditional Korean lullabies and abstract visual narratives, the work demonstrates that sound can function as a powerful form of visual art, creating emotional resonance and bridging individual and collective experiences. Ultimately, it invites viewers to reflect on the profound ways sound shapes our understanding of identity, memory, and belonging.
advisors: Andrew Demirjian, Hans Tammen, Kelly Anderson

The Tales of Maruni
by Sikuma Rai
film 

The filmmaker journeys into the fading indigenous genre of Maruni—an eastern Nepali tradition of song and dance—narrating letters to her late grandfather in search of connection and clarity. Accompanied by her father and Nawin Khadka, a devoted folk musician from an upper-caste background, she traces echoes of memory, identity, and the fragile inheritance of indigenous culture
advisors: Reiko Tahara, Andrew Lund, Rajan Shrestha

My Manhattan Project in 2025
by Satoko Saito
film

Learning about the link between the Japanese, the Indigenous peoples of Canada, and the Marshall Islanders via one stone, uranium, a Japanese filmmaker in NY ponders what she can do now and here, and sets out to the Crafternoon sessions at the New York Public Library to create new conversations and her own Manhattan Project 80 years later.
advisors: Reiko Tahara, Betty Yu, Kelly Anderson

All You Can Eat
by Kelly Schiesswhol
film

All You Can Eat is a 2D animated horror short that examines the ways in which patriarchal violence hides in plain sight. The film follows a small town bakery as its owner, wife, staff, and patrons feverishly prepare for the annual pie eating contest.
advisors: Kara Lynch, Poyen Wang, Amanda Bonaiuto

unPlug
by Haisi Hu
film

A woman’s attempt to free her animal spirit from the forces of technologization.
advisors: Ricardo Miranda, Hans Tammen, David Briggs

Screenshot

The Dinner Script
by Eric Juhola
installation

The Dinner Script is a dual projection installation that examines my connection to an object assigned “dinner table”, exploring how the familial rituals it participated in may have shaped our sense of self, and how memory affects that self-construction over time. To inform our notion of self, the project treats ritual as performance – as a societal script that we play along with, reinforced with positive feedback. Ultimately, the installation asks whether our sense of self dissipates with the fading rituals and looks at what is left behind.
advisors: Andrew Demirjian, Zach Nader, Michael Gitlin

As Above So Below
by Robin Smith Fedock
film 

A short experimental documentary that invites viewers to notice the unexpected world of entanglements that connect life, death, and fungi in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery.
advisors: Kelly Anderson, Sean Hanley, Rachel Stevens

One Can Only Dream
by Sophia Yacca
interactive web

In dreams, we forget, we fear, we fracture—but sometimes, we find each other. One Can Only Dream of being found and being seen. In this interactive exhibit, you will find your way through the dreamlands in-game and discover where you are sent. Whether you belong or resonate is up to you. But as in dreams, sometimes we don’t get that choice.
advisors: Andrew Lund, Poyen Wang, Ricardo Miranda

A Grieving Heart
by Wendy Cong Zhao
film

An immigrant woman examines her past in the wake of her American ex-boyfriend’s death.
advisors: Kelly Anderson, Andrew Lund, Natalie Conn