February 27, 2024 – The Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University opens its 2024 MFA Thesis Exhibitions (February 28–April 27) with a seven-week series of concurrent solo exhibitions by 29 second-year students that explore empowerment through the lens of visual and material culture.
“The depth and breadth of these works is incredible and inspiring.” said Associate Professor Sharyn O’Mara, Graduate Director for the Master of Fine Arts Program. “They demonstrate deep engagement in a broad range of contemporary issues that explore past, present, and future images and imaginaries, objects, and mediations. They both expand within and defy traditional disciplinary boundaries, and the results are powerful, provocative, political, and poetic.”
Collectively, the works reflect a variety of discipline-centric and mixed-media practices that celebrate visual narratives and explore the interplay of diverse materials, digital processes as a companion to hand fabrication, draftsmanship in printmaking, and multicultural perspectives and personal identity in graphic design, illustration, and UX/UI design.
Associate Professor of Aesthetics and Critical Studies Philip Glahn said of the solo exhibitions: “Claiming agency in a contemporary politics of aesthetics, the students have eagerly engaged in the production and distribution of knowledge and experience that is our shared visual-material culture. Art is wielded both as a tool of creative empowerment and a framing of the local and global ways in which selves are situated as subjects.”
Tyler’s annual MFA Thesis exhibitions are the culmination of two years of intensive artistic and critical development through critical analysis, cross-disciplinary studio practice, and diverse theoretical study. Students showcase their work from programs in Ceramics, Glass, Graphic and Interactive Design, Fibers and Material Studies, Metals/Jewelry/CAD-CAM, Painting, Photography, Printmaking, and Sculpture.
The exhibitions are held at the Temple Contemporary galleries, the school’s renowned center for exhibitions and public programs.
When they graduate, Tyler’s MFA Class of 2024 will join a community of distinguished alumni that includes Moe Brooker (BFA ’70, MFA ’72); Syd Carpenter (MFA ’76), Edgar Heap of Birds (MFA ’79); Harriete Estel Berman (MFA ’80); Virgil Marti (MFA ’90); Anoka Faruqee (MFA ’97); Trenton Doyle Hancock (MFA ’00); Will Villalongo (MFA ’01); Erin Riley (MFA ’09); Amber Cowan (MFA ’11), Sijia Chen (MFA '11), Kara Springer (MFA ’17), Warith Taha (MFA ’20), and Isaac Scott (MFA '21), among others.
The 2024 MFA Thesis Exhibitions schedule is as follows:
February 28 – March 2: Molly Burt-Westvig, John Erwin Dillard
March 13 – 16: Maxwell Davis, Blithe Ophelia Grey, Theophilus Annor
March 20 – 23: Jake Lahah, Elliot Engles, Ollie Goss, William Toney
March 27 – 30: Brendan O’Shaughnessy, Anne Adams, Anna Bockrath, Ryan Scails
April 3 – 5: Ramon Antonio Vega, Claire HarnEnz, Katharine Suchan, Alessandra Puglisi
April 10 – 13: Daniel Cappello, Juhyung Park, Bradford Davis, Yaqeen Alyamani
April 17 – 20: Heather Annette Phillips, Henry Rosenberg, Noa Hagiladi, Nilou Kazemzadeh
April 25 – 27: Mike Ray, Ha Tran, Nghi To, MeiLi Carling
Location: Temple Contemporary, 2001 N. 13th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19122
Exhibition Receptions: Fridays, 6–8 p.m.
Gallery Hours: Wednesday and Thursday, 12–8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.
Find details about upcoming shows on Tyler’s Events Calendar.
View past MFA Thesis Exhibitions on STELLA, Tyler’s virtual satellite gallery.