The Parsons School of Design is excited to announce the MFA Photography Thesis Exhibition: Language is a Skin

This show is the culmination of two years of intensive studio practice and includes the work of Agnes An, Khalilah Asaka, Wei Wei Chen, Hannah Daigle, Radha Datta, Chris Jackson, Ellen Kirkpatrick, Prince Nwahuocha, Azusa Pan, Lin Perryman, Kanishka Puri, Vriddhi Sawlani, Alessandro Seccareccia, Jalyn Turner, Vasudev Vashisht, Sierra Wilensky, Qiqi Ying and Xuecen Zhang.

Introduction by Liam Otero: Language is a Skin, and so too, Time-Based Media

Whether it is a conscious decision or otherwise, every successful graduate-level art program typically adheres to a particular philosophy or methodology in how its students approach their craft. The MFA Photography program at Parsons exemplifies this phenomenon through the highly conceptual approach its 18-strong coterie have taken in photography, video & moving image art, and even kinetic sculpture.

This is all the more significant when considering the exhibition’s title, “Language is a Skin”, a quote from French philosopher Roland Barthes’s postulation on language’s capacity to simultaneously reveal and conceal itself. Though the artists applied Barthes’s idea toward the investigation of identity, I found an equally pressing theme that remained in line with the Barthesian reading here. The parameters of time-based media are just as liminally complex according to the creative choices each student has undertaken in their explorations, critiques, and observations of photography and its close cousin mediums.

The interdisciplinary processes embedded into the thesis projects primarily examine relationships between memory and the archive. Much of the work has been rather non-photographic in this regard, be it via sensorially evocative “mental photographic” conceptual works or durational, borderline cybernetic studies in temporality. Elsewhere, another layer of skin to time-based media has been the performative elements as denoted in self-portraiture, gender & queer-centric desire, or diaristic documentations akin to Kitchen Sink Realism. Subsequently, these experimentations yielded probing inquiries that entail the disruption of linear time, institutional critiques of oppressive power systems, and reframed outlooks on ecology.

Though time-based media is often synonymous with two-dimensional mediums, the majority of works extend into the physical space where we the viewers stand, thus rendering our relationships with the art all the more personal. Floor-to-ceiling cyanotype tapestries and voyeuristic boxed videos encourage contemplative perambulation while sequential photo-installations and accompanying photobooks necessitate a multimedia dialogue. Pivoting from here, multi-sensory elements are incorporated into the visual schema with further considerations extended to aural, olfactory, and tactile sensations.

For as large as this group may be, they are not so dissimilar as their interventions in expanding the scope of time-based media has become a common thread. The 18 artists have been together on a near-continual basis for the last two years and are acutely aware of one another’s artistic motivations, yet everyone is concentrated on their respective work. That reality is what makes this all the more enchanting seeing that a cohesiveness came about rather organically, especially when noticing the pervasiveness of time-based media’s inextricable connections to memory, archives, and time. Returning to Barthes, language is a skin that contains an infinitesimal range of meanings that inform, contradict, and impact its very existence. Having witnessed the progress of each students’ thesis projects, I found they proved time-based media, too, is a skin whose layered meanings enables us to forge a more intimate and emotionally resonant relationship with photography.