Image Text M.F.A. '25: Collective Study
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Exhibition Abstract
Collective Study is an exhibition of recent work by the M.F.A. candidates in Cornell University's Image Text program, which brings together creative writing, visual media, and publication design. The show emerged alongside a shared reading of The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley — a novel of solitude, apocalypse, and futures undone — which served not as a directive but as a companion to the process of making. Rather than interpreting the novel directly, the artists engaged with its atmosphere and themes, allowing the act of collective reading to inform their practices subtly.
Working within a community of artists, the process of creating became entangled with conversation, shared research, and mutual influence. In this context, reading was not isolated or interpretive, but generative—a catalyst for new work shaped by collective attention. The resulting pieces reflect an ongoing dialogue between text and image, reading and making, solitude and collaboration.
Featuring works by artists Maddy Bremner, Nelis Franken, Catherine Gans, Danielle Garcia Tubo, Maxwell Harvey-Sampson, Crystal Lamar, Sara Minsky, Marié Nobematsu-Le Gassic, Monica Regan, David Richards, Genevieve Sachs, Yonatan Schechner, Kamaria Shepherd, and Chris Stiegler (all M.F.A. '25), the exhibition showcases a wide range of media responding to Shelley's elegy as both mirror and warning.
Additional Details
On Saturday, September 13, from 2–4 p.m., the exhibition will host a group reading featuring poet and translator Mónica de la Torre, whose recent book Pause the Document documents the events of 2020 and the process of rethinking artistic practice in the face of intersecting global crises.
Collective Study takes place during the New York Art Book Fair. Meg Onli and writer Lucy Ives will hold a classroom conversation on Sunday, September 14, from 3–4 p.m. at MoMA PS1 centered on the launch of a radical re-issue of Shelley's The Last Man. Edited by Meg Onli, the book will be for sale by the publisher, Image Text Ithaca.
