MFA programs are a notorious (though thankfully not imperative) rite of passage for artists seeking time and space to challenge themselves, absorb structured feedback from their peers and elders, and earn an institutional stamp of approval. Tavares Strachan, Hugh Hayden, and Rose B. Simpson are just a few of the leading artists who cemented their perspectives on these campuses in the last two decades. Despite federal spending cuts to higher education and an uncertain art market, young creatives are still flocking to universities in search of mentorship and a port in the storm from which to make work. With spring semesters in full swing around the country, we invited seven MFA students from CalArts, Columbia, RISD, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Yale—specializing in painting, photography, and sculpture—to share a recent work and tell us what’s on their minds.
Sascha Huth, 35, SAIC Sculpture MFA
“My interventions confront the ever-expanding world of commodities. My practice relies on repetition, rehearsal, and dedication as it oscillates between industrialism and vandalism.”
Martha Estrella, 24, CalArts Photography and Media MFA
“This work speaks to my identity as a Mexican American through a close focus on my family, honoring the sacrifices that shaped my life and offering comfort to those who are far from their home, family, and culture.”
Wenqing Zhai, 28, Yale Painting MFA
“This nocturnal tableau stages a quiet confrontation between domestic mythologies and structural power. Rooted in the legacy of China’s one-child policy, this work examines how state power infiltrates the private sphere and normalizes gendered roles. Here, gender, fate, and survival are not chosen but allocated.”
Yehwan Song, 30, Columbia Sculpture MFA
“My work examines the hierarchical structure of the Internet, which presents itself as a fair and connective ‘World Wide Web’ while remaining deeply uneven depending on geography, access, and infrastructure. It questions how this utopian framing masks digital inequality and reinforces forms of global ignorance rather than genuine connection.”
Ricky Vasan, 24, RISD Painting MFA
“Friends of Friends is one of two paintings based on a Thanksgiving party I organized with a close friend. It was for those of us who had nowhere else to be, commemorated by cheap beer, wine, and frozen pizza. I am constantly in a state of yearning, and this is the feeling at the core of my project. Relationships end, friends move away, and the party you had been looking forward to all week comes to an end before you even know it. Recording these diaristic moments in paint is my way of allowing myself to sit and linger in my emotions.”
Virginia Hanusik, 28, RISD Photography MFA
“Right now, I’m working a lot with my father, a retired union sheet metal worker, to learn how meaning is embedded in a material central to my family’s history. I’m wondering how I find my way into the future—or even see myself there. I’m looking at the remnants of American industry and thinking about the spatial and spiritual qualities of moving through the world at a time of ecological collapse.”
Khidr Joseph, 30, SAIC Photo MFA
“I am asking how grief can be processed outside of prescribed cultural structures. What might it mean for my family to reimagine those rituals for ourselves? I am also questioning how to create work in the absence of a complete archive. How do I construct portraits of ancestors I never knew? What materials or processes can stand in for missing images, objects, or records?”
in your life?