MFA in Visual Art Thesis Research and Production Grants
2022-02-16 • Sam Fox School
Livia Xandersmith and Martin Lammert have each been awarded Thesis Research and Production Grants by the Sam Fox School’s MFA in Visual Art program.
All second-year MFA-VA students are eligible to apply for the grants, which provide funding to pursue ambitious thesis projects. Proposals are reviewed and awarded by a faculty jury based on the following criteria:
- Intrinsic merit of the proposal
- Evidence of value and contribution to thesis work
- Provision of a well-considered and reasonable budget
Their thesis projects, along with those of other MFA-VA degree candidates, will be featured in Nine Ways from Sunday: 2022 MFA in Visual Art Thesis Exhibition, on view April 9-July 25 at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum.
LIVIA XANDERSMITH
Project: A Comedy of Agency
A Comedy of Agency consists of a panorama of two painted 8-foot panels sewn together, which rotate on a motorized loop. The final panorama will be mounted on a wall, forcing the viewers to wait to take in the whole composition. This installation will investigate painting as a more active occupant of space when intertwined with sculptural elements. In particular, Xandersmith wants to know how painting can implicate the viewer’s physicality in material and conceptual ways. Conceptually, Xandersmith is seeking to create a spectacle that suggests a lack of agency in a chaotic and surrealist interpretation of our contemporary time when media, history, and society culminate into a visually toxic soup that seems indecipherable.
MARTIN LAMMERT
Project: PADRPDAMCCP (working title)
Lammert’s proposal explores the unspoken dialogue that forms between assembled artworks in a way that parallels the relationship between characters in a play, movie, or story. Its goal is to view the composition of sculpture in terms of theatrics and is a performative project upon an octagonal stage. Sculptures on this stage will act as a setting and backdrop for a one-act play, further altering the final form. This final form, presented at the Kemper Art Museum, will be a static sculpture (the stage and props) with embedded speakers faintly playing a recording of the performance.