SVA Grads Make Art out of History’s Rubble
The Art Practice MFA thesis exhibition rewrites what came before, pushing back against harmful systems and inventing better ways of living together.
Grad student thesis shows run the risk of curatorial chaos, given their typical premise. Brought together under the auspices of a degree-granting program, the creative output of an eclectic group of artists with diverging interests, aesthetics, and methods might not naturally gel into a harmonious exhibition.
This could have been the case for the nine thesis candidates wrapping up their time in the School of Visual Art’s MFA Art Practice program, particularly given the seismic shifts rocking the institution. The three-year low-residency program will move exclusively online next academic year, and it’s no longer accepting applications for future classes. In February, the program’s longtime chair resigned after Epstein revelations. Then, SVA announced that the Curatorial Practice program will also shut down in 2027. Yet, amid this tumult, the members of the MFA Art Practice’s penultimate graduating class honed their thesis projects and managed to locate a throughline — a spirit of scavenging and reimagining across layered terrains of memory and meaning — to cohere their disparate pursuits into a lively exhibition. Titled Finding Here, the presentation is currently on view at Art Cake in Brooklyn.
The show opens with a series of nearly two dozen “redactions” (2026) — spreads from the New York Post’s Page Six gossip column that artist Richard Montañez has taken to with a keen eye and a black permanent marker. He leaves on the page a voicey edit, often stemming from drag culture and queer history, for example, “Girrlll…” and “KIKI! tonight.”
