2025 MFA Thesis Exhibition: “Through Shifting Lenses” Presented by SMFA at Tufts
Title: A Multiverse of Perspectives: SMFA at Tufts Presents the 2025 MFA Thesis Exhibition, Through Shifting Lenses
From May 6 through May 18, 2025, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University (SMFA at Tufts) invites the public to experience its annual culminating MFA Thesis Exhibition. Titled Through Shifting Lenses, the show brings together the work of fourteen emerging artists whose diverse practices embody a kaleidoscope of interpretations, materials, and methods. Hosted at the Aidekman Arts Center in Medford, Massachusetts, this curated showcase captures the urgency, resilience, and imaginative force shaping today’s contemporary art landscape.
Through Shifting Lenses features the creative output of MiJung Yun, Richard Farrell, Megan Weeda, Peyton Michelle, Lu Adami, Katie He, Foster Boyajian, Yulia Niu, Schuyler Dragoo, Chris Diani, Hannah Gray, Yining Lee, Anguo Ping, and Ariel Grubb. With varied backgrounds and perspectives, these artists have developed bodies of work that reflect personal inquiry while responding thoughtfully to shared global experiences.
Theme and Exploration
The exhibition serves as both a reflection and transformation of our collective moment—an era marked by social, environmental, and technological flux. The class of 2025 has navigated a world shaped by “unprecedented” events, from pandemic aftermaths to political unrest, climate crises, and evolving cultural norms. Their response is a tapestry of visual and interdisciplinary dialogues on histories and futures, mental health, identity, spatial constraints, and interconnectedness.
Viewers will encounter time-stretching themes that oscillate between the microscopic and cosmic—volcanic drawings, for example, evoke both geological time and personal intimacy. Autobiographical paintings grapple with familial lineage and suggest the repetitive rituals of domestic life. In contrast, ephemeral works like informal pen sketches break open the suburban everyday, exploring humor, nostalgia, and belonging.
Storytelling Across Media
The artists employ a wide array of media—from paintings and sculpture to video, animation, performance, and digital installation. Their interdisciplinary experimentation is not merely aesthetic; it is generative of new conceptual spaces. Environmental narratives take shape through pieces that connect human beings to non-human systems, such as AI entities and natural ecosystems. Elsewhere, game engine-designed environments stand as speculative architectures—surreal, interactive, and interactive provocations of re-imagined world-building.
In one poignant work, simple plastic bags stand in as proxies for human bodies, interrogating absence and fragility through materials commonly regarded as disposable. Another immersive video projects a stop-motion underwater story that considers themes of justice and personal freedom, effectively dissolving viewer boundaries with exuberant animation and tactility.
Community and Identity
A strong undercurrent throughout the show is the importance of identity—gender, cultural heritage, sexuality, and self-discovery. One project offers a documentary-style tribute to LGBTQ communities, tracing stories of resistance and liberation through waves of societal conservatism and celebration. Others delve into questions of representation through fandom culture, personal narrative, and communal memory.
Moments of introspection punctuate the exhibition. Some artists recount experiences of isolation, solo travel, illness, and psychological transformation—topics that have become increasingly relevant in post-pandemic discourse. Rather than retreat inward, these artists use vulnerability to foster collective understanding, casting doubt as a fertile ground for connectivity and innovation.
A Vision Forward
Through Shifting Lenses is not just an art exhibition; it’s a vision board for a multifaceted and inclusive future. The works embody a range of emotional registers—humor, sorrow, joy, rage, and wonder—and celebrate making as a tool for both survival and resistance. Whether portraying the collapse of structures or the forming of new paradigms, the 2025 MFA cohort at SMFA at Tufts offers a testament to art’s power to bear witness, rebuild, and reimagine.
The exhibition is open to the public and free to attend. Visitors are encouraged to immerse themselves in the fluctuating worlds shaped in these final theses—each one a lens through which to envision new trajectories.
Learn more at smfa.tufts.edu/mfa-thesis.
Event Details:
Through Shifting Lenses: 2025 MFA Thesis Exhibition
Dates: May 6–18, 2025
Location: Aidekman Arts Center, Medford, Massachusetts
Featured Artists:
MiJung Yun, Richard Farrell, Megan Weeda, Peyton Michelle, Lu Adami, Katie He, Foster Boyajian, Yulia Niu, Schuyler Dragoo, Chris Diani, Hannah Gray, Yining Lee, Anguo Ping, Ariel Grubb
Curate your experience. Shift your perspective. Visit the thesis exhibition and witness tomorrow’s voices in art today.