MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts Class of 2022
Join us in celebrating the work of this year’s graduating cohort in the MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts program. Learn more about graduating students' thesis exhibitions, which are on view at Duke and in Durham from March 25 to April 15.
I’m always moved to see our MFA EDA thesis work begin to come together, having witnessed the evolution and confluence of idea and form throughout the last year and half. Our seven graduates this spring transport viewers and listeners to diverse geographies near and far; to institutional spaces, mythologies, and traditions embraced and contested; and to the luminance of time-based media and the felt engagement of installation work, among much else.
Whether intended or not, this is all work produced in the context of COVID-19—stories discovered, created, and crafted despite any limitations to graduate study brought on by a pandemic. Annually, our MFA EDA thesis exhibitions are an opportunity to witness the newest in experimental and documentary art in venues throughout Durham, on and off campus. We must celebrate all the accomplishment, but even more importantly fully consume what these seven artists are serving up, take it all in completely, look and listen, and then again.
—Tom Rankin
Director, Master of Fine Arts in Experimental and Documentary Arts
Professor of the Practice of Art, Art History & Visual Studies
Emily MacDiarmid: “Approved for Release”
Emily MacDiarmid's MFA EDA thesis, Approved for Release, is a short film visualizing psychological experimentation conducted by the United States Defense Intelligence Agency.
Lily Frame: “Breaking the Rules: A Minor Spatial Inconvenience”
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?
Emma Geiger: “Haven”
Filmed and composed primarily in Durham, North Carolina, and Whidbey Island, Washington, Emma Geiger's thesis film Haven creates an environment of poetic immersion, disrupting the perception of time and memory as linear and clear.
Shirin Maleki: “30/900”
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.
Taoyuan Jin: “sequence”
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.
Ivy Nicole-Jonét: “Ode (Owed) to Black Womxn”
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.
Nathan Borradaile Wright: “Miscellaneous Earth”
Nathan Borradaile Wright’s thesis Miscellaneous Earth is a multichannel video installation exploring our spatial and technological dissociation from the landscape of collective memory.