We invited artists from Duke’s MFA EDA community to share work they have made in response to the coronavirus crisis. See the full “Home & Away” collection here. Artist’s Reflection Collage ...

We invited artists from Duke’s MFA EDA community to share work they have made in response to the coronavirus crisis. See the full “Home & Away” collection here. Artist’s Reflection I ...

We invited artists from Duke’s MFA EDA community to share work they have made in response to the coronavirus crisis. See the full “Home & Away” collection here. Artist’s Reflection We ...

We invited artists from Duke’s MFA EDA community to share work they have made in response to the coronavirus crisis. See the full “Home & Away” collection here. Artist’s Reflection We ...

We invited artists from Duke’s MFA EDA community to share work they have made in response to the coronavirus crisis. See the full “Home & Away” collection here. Artist’s Reflection Some ...

We invited artists from Duke’s MFA EDA community to share work they have made in response to the coronavirus crisis. See the full “Home & Away” collection here. Artist’s Reflection I ...

We invited artists from Duke’s MFA EDA community to share work they have made in response to the coronavirus crisis. See the full “Home & Away” collection here. Artist’s Reflection My ...

We invited artists from Duke’s MFA EDA community to share work they have made in response to the coronavirus crisis. See the full “Home & Away” collection here. Artist’s Reflection Windows ...

We invited artists from Duke’s MFA EDA community to share work they have made in response to the coronavirus crisis. See the full “Home & Away” collection here. Artist’s Reflection Even ...

We invited artists from Duke’s MFA EDA community to share work they have made in response to the coronavirus crisis. See the full “Home & Away” collection here. Artist’s Reflection When ...

We invited artists from Duke’s MFA EDA community to share work they have made in response to the coronavirus crisis. See the full “Home & Away” collection here. Artist’s Reflection Masks ...

We invited artists from Duke’s MFA EDA community to share work they have made in response to the coronavirus crisis. See the full “Home & Away” collection here. Artist’s Reflection Learning ...

We invited artists from Duke’s MFA EDA community to share work they have made in response to the coronavirus crisis. See the full “Home & Away” collection here. Artist’s Reflection The ...

Nathan Borradaile Wright’s thesis Miscellaneous Earth is a multichannel video installation exploring our spatial and technological dissociation from the landscape of collective memory.

Using augmented and virtual reality, animation, and mining archival footage from Black media, Ivy Nicole-Jonét's thesis Ode (Owed) to Black Womxn creates an Afrofuturistic world centered on an immersive, documentary experience that celebrates Black womxn.

Taoyuan Jin’s thesis sequence is a short film about being in transit and moving through the illegible American landscapes. Integrating sources from the digital and natural worlds, the film is an account of fragmented memories, momentary spectacles, and the personal journeys of a directionless traveler and narrator.

Shirin Maleki's thesis 30/900 is a video installation exploring concepts such as separation, language attrition, memory, reflections on the past and present. The videos read the fragmented experience of an immigrant going through temporary residencies in a forever-liminal otherness between departure and a promised arrival.

Lily Frame's multimedia installation Breaking the Rules: A Minor Spatial Inconvenience recreates seclusion and restraint using architecture to speak to an undiscussed social issue: is seclusion the solution or is there a solution to seclusion among our nation’s schools?

Emily MacDiarmid's MFA EDA thesis Approved for Release is a short film visualizing psychological experimentation conducted by the United States Defense Intelligence Agency.

Julie Platner's short film ”Third Alternate Executor” explores the life, mortality, and ephemera of her Uncle Kenny, a human deeply entrenched in an eccentric version of normative, white, lower-class social structures. The piece seeks to elaborate on performative masculinity, objecthood, class and the American Dream.

“Water or More” is an interactive installation that uses facets of water to describe the wide-ranging emotions of human existence, taking inspiration from the reflection of water in literature, poems, and films. The project explores how to optimize space and combine the real and virtual to design an immersive audience experience.

Archer Boyette’s “we breathe each other in and out of existence” is a multimedia installation that weaves together analog, digital, sculptural, and sonic components to celebrate the magic of plant life and create a space of environmental reverence. All botanicals in the installation were harvested in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.

Alexa Dilworth interviews Moriah LeFebvre, MFA EDA '21, about her use of drawing and animation to tell highly personal stories, including those in her thesis film, by & by and Works in Rough Going: Recovery Community and Communication During the Pandemic, currently on view in the Keohane-Kenan Gallery and online.

Jade Chuyu Xiong’s film “Mutual Players” juxtaposes movie clips from early English films that feature actors of Chinese descent in Chinese roles. By reediting the original footage, Xiong aims to craft a new narrative that challenges the stereotypical ways in which Asian and Asian American actors are portrayed in Western cinema.

Bree von Bradsky's “Lavender Vista” is a short experimental film that depicts the disorientating effects of coming out. Through the style of collage, the film weaves together archival home movies, educational films, and commercials to create a landscape that spans from the suburban USA to the celestial.

Yang Xu’s exhibit “Outset” explores her feelings about and understanding of the college entrance examination, which is taken by tens of millions of Chinese students each June. The exam is not only the starting point for students to realize their dreams, but also a battle that requires all-out efforts.

Katelyn Auger's thesis film “Paradise in the Pines” is the culmination of two years exploring complicated feelings around family, environment, and memory. Auger shares how she reappropriated home movies alongside 16mm footage to create a meditation on forgiveness and understanding.

Inspired by Plato and the concept of media gatekeepers, Mao Wei’s installation is a fairy tale of projections that prompt the viewer to reconsider reality. With spring thesis presentations postponed, Duke Arts honors the MFA EDA Class of 2020 with interviews that dig into the projects and their makers.

Klos’s photographs make supernatural beliefs, imagined in the southern landscape, visible. Trained as a contemporary, fine art photographer, Klos pushes the boundaries of “documentary” in By No Other Name.

Cici Cheng’s quiet, thoughtful portraits capture her family at work renovating a 1970s house into “their first and forever home.” With spring thesis presentations postponed, Duke Arts honors the MFA EDA Class of 2020 with interviews that dig into the projects and their makers.

We invited artists from Duke’s MFA EDA community to share work they have made in response to the coronavirus crisis. See the full “Home & Away” collection here. Artist’s Reflection It’s ...

Fati Abubakar studied nursing and public health before she started documenting life in her home region in Borno State, Nigeria. In "African in America," she uses photography to "highlight the diversity of immigrants that are not acknowledged in the usual story." With spring thesis presentations postponed, Duke Arts honors the MFA EDA Class of 2020 with interviews that dig into the projects and their makers.

Zaire McPhearson interviewed her grandmother and great aunts about a traumatic experience that challenged their faith and tells their story through sculpture and photography. With spring thesis presentations postponed, Duke Arts honors the MFA EDA Class of 2020 with interviews that dig into the projects and their makers.

Iliana Sun uses documentary storytelling to make complex issues in conservation biology relatable. Her MFA thesis exhibition chronicles the web of relationships and competing interests surrounding the vaquita porpoise, making it clear that saving an endangered species is only partly about the animal.

Meet sound designer and documentary artist Michael Betts II, the new CDS Courses Director for the Center for Documentary Studies. For his thesis exhibition, he designed an immersive, interactive experience that invites visitors to be anti-racist. With spring thesis presentations postponed, Duke Arts honors the MFA EDA Class of 2020 with interviews that dig into the projects and their makers.

Lauren Henschel was finishing her thesis exhibition—a complex, multi-layered installation that speaks to mortality—just as the whole world was confronted by its theme: how our bodies fail us. With spring thesis presentations postponed, Duke Arts honors the MFA EDA Class of 2020 with interviews that dig into the projects and their makers.

Will Warasila left New York City's commercial photography world to return home and document the American South. With spring thesis presentations postponed, Duke Arts honors the MFA EDA Class of 2020 with interviews that dig into the projects and their makers.

Alanna Styer presents A Prarie, Not A Promise. With spring thesis presentations postponed, Duke Arts honors the MFA EDA Class of 2020 with interviews that dig into the projects and their makers.