Interdisciplinary Arts @ NEU
Mark C. Aylward, Aiwen Cheng, David Cohn, Hannah Groudas
On View: April 7 – 22, 2017
Reception: Friday, April 7, 6-8PM

Northeastern University’s College of Arts, Media, and Design is pleased to partner with the New Art Center to showcase the work of four graduate students in the MFA program in Interdisciplinary Arts.  Working across sculpture, drawing, installation, video, and animation, these artists playfully illustrate the broad scope and unique sensibility of this new program.

Aiwen Cheng’s Hush, Let’s Party enlists NAC students and visitors to complete a whimsical, experimental narrative composed entirely from animated GIFS. David Cohn explores the space between language and form in a series of drawings and videos that collectively form the installation Approximations of Not. Hannah Groudas explores the gallery walls as if they were a sensitive living skin in Pellis, while Mark C. Aylward develops the site-specific installation Nothing to See Here in an overlooked cranny of the building.

This exhibition serves as a capstone to the students’ first year in the program. Each student visited NAC and worked with their advisor to propose a project responding directly to both the site and the community. Their proposals were reviewed by guest curator Susan Metrican who helped them refine and scale their projects for exhibition.

Currently in its inaugural year, Northeastern’s MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts educates artists for a lifetime of creative work in the public sphere. Drawing on visual and performing art, media studies, and the expanded field of design, the program supports the development of ambitious projects by a diverse, international group of creative practitioners.

About Northeastern University’s MFA in Interdisciplinary Art

The two-year interdisciplinary program draws core faculty from Art and Design, Architecture, Music, Game Design, Art History, and Media and Screen Studies. Students pursue creative work in the context of a major urban research university with the capacity to build dynamic research collaborations both across the globe and in the neighborhood. Partnerships with institutions and artist-run initiatives internationally provide experiential learning opportunities in a global context, while the city of Boston offers an unparalleled intellectual environment for advanced study in the arts.

Learn more at: https://www.northeastern.edu/interarts/

About the Guest Curator 

Susan Metrican is the Rosalie and Jim Shane Curator and Director of the Arts at Brandeis University’s Women’s Studies Research Center where she develops exhibitions for the Kniznick Gallery and creates educational programs to enhance exhibitions. Susan is a co-founder of kijidome, an experimental project space and collaborative based in Boston’s South End, and maintains a studio art practice. She holds a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

About the New Art Center

The New Art Center is a community art education space which offers everyone, at all levels of ability, exceptional opportunities to make, exhibit, view, think about and talk about art. The New Art Center offers a supportive culture that takes art and artists seriously. We serve over 2,500 students annually in hundreds of classes and workshops. Our faculty includes some of the region’s most esteemed art educators. In a setting that is welcoming and conveniently located, we offer an inclusive, multi-generational approach to art education that has served children, teens and adults at all skill levels since 1977. We have one of the few mid-sized nonprofit exhibition spaces in New England, and attract over 4,500 visitors annually. The New Art Center’s Curatorial Opportunity Program is well respected in New England’s visual arts community. This program is a unique vehicle for curators and artists to collaborate and present thoughtful, innovative concepts. It is the foundation of our Connections Program for gallery education. Learn more at www.NewArtCenter.org