On April 5, 2025, the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard) will present graduate thesis exhibitions organized by the Class of 2025. Collectively entitled
the projects point, in the students’ words, “to a deep engagement with histories that reverberate back and forth in time to critically reimagine the present.”
will be on view at CCS Bard’s Hessel Museum of Art through May 25, 2025.
The graduate exhibition is a core component of CCS Bard’s master’s program, which offers each student the opportunity to organize an independent project involving new commissions, original research into artists’ practices, and engagement with CCS Bard’s extensive archives and the Marieluise Hessel Collection. Past student-curated exhibitions have served as springboards for artists in the earliest stages of their careers, deep scholarship into historic movements and tendencies, and as the basis for ongoing curatorial investigations by CCS Bard graduates at other leading museums, galleries, and arts organizations around the world.
Representing individual curatorial concerns and strategies, this year’s projects range from exhibitions that explore digital dystopias, media circulation, competing histories and memory, and underrepresented artists and archives.
CCS Bard Graduate Student Curatorial StatementsFull curatorial statements are linked in the exhibition titles.
gap gap gap / گپ گپ گپFeatured artists:
Hangama Amiri, Latifa Zafar Attaii, Zelikha Zohra ShojaCurated by
Zuhra Amini How do photographs condition our perceptions of the self, family, and community?
gap gap gap / گپ گپ گپ brings together three contemporary Afghan artists who refigure personal, everyday photos through the slow, careful process of needlework. Transformed by time and scale, their resulting works—situated at the intersection of photography and fiber art—monumentalize the careful, demanding process of suturing relationships that have ruptured in the aftermath of displacement.
The Edge of BelongingsFeatured artists:
Eugene Jung, boma pak, Jiajia Zhang, Bruno ZhuCurated by
Jungmin ChoUbiquitous consumer goods with designated lifespans, from digital devices to fast fashion and souvenirs to construction materials, carry a dual weight: physical and emotional. We form real bonds with them, yet they are intended to become obsolete, outmoded, or unwanted, encouraging repeat consumption and disposal. This exhibition—featuring Eugene Jung, boma pak, Jiajia Zhang, and Bruno Zhu—observes the unexpected intimacies we feel with common and disposable objects and how these connections reflect broader socioeconomic structures.
Sung Hwan Kim: Queer bird facesFeatured artists:
Sung Hwan KimCurated by
Hayoung ChungQueer bird faces presents films and excerpts from Sung Hwan Kim’s ongoing research into undocumented early 20th-century Korean immigration to Hawaiʻi. Kim’s visual re-creations—through enigmatic narratives, nonbinary figures, and idiosyncratic subtitles—invite us to envision these immigrants’ systematic erasure from history and education shaped by national boundaries. An exhibition publication featuring poems by early Korean immigrants to the U.S. and a concert by David Michael DiGregorio accompany.
Bảy nổi ba chìm – Seven up Three downFeatured artists:
Lê Đình Chung, Daphné Nan Le Sergent, Prune Phi, Xavier Robles de Medina, and
Arlette Quỳnh-Anh TrầnCurated by
Đỗ Tường LinhBảy nổi ba chìm – Seven up Three down pays homage to Hàm Nghi (1871–1944), an Annamese (modern-day Vietnamese) emperor who became the country’s first modern artist while in exile in Algeria. The exhibition weaves together the works of Lê Đình Chung, Daphné Nan Le Sergent, Prune Phi, Xavier Robles de Medina, and Arlette Quỳnh-Anh Trần, all of whom traverse and echo hidden histories related to Hàm Nghi and his time to reinterpret, reimagine, and breathe life into both the present and the future.
dearmuthafuckindreams,Featured artists:
Essex Hemphill, Char Jeré, Wayson Jones, Malcolm Peacock, Collin Riggins, Marlon Riggs, Colin Robinson, and
Jaguar Mary XCurated by
Omar Jason Farahdearmuthafuckindreams, sits in the power and possibility of emerging artists convening with their black queer ancestors. Bringing together photographs by Collin Alexander Riggins and Colin Robinson, words by Malcolm Peacock, Wayson Jones, and Essex Hemphill, and films by Char Jeré, Jaguar Mary X, and Marlon Riggs, the exhibition’s polyvocal and intergenerational voice speaks to the continuity and dynamism of the black queer radical tradition from the 1980s to today.
The Appearance of DistanceFeatured artists:
Tiffany Sia, Kobby Adi, Jackie KarutiCurated by
Matthew Lawson GarrettThe Appearance of Distance is an exhibition featuring artists whose work addresses the materiality of images and the relationship between their movement and the space through which they circulate. Works by Tiffany Sia, Kobby Adi, and Jackie Karuti respond to today’s media environment by introducing frictions, revealing how the movement of images within apparently ethereal networks leave material traces on both the surface of images and the physical landscapes through which they pass.
a clear veilFeatured artists:
Azadeh Elmizadeh, Ella Gonzales, Lotus L. Kang, and
Audie MurrayCurated by
Cicely HaggertyThrough methods of blurring, folding, layering, and concealing, the artists included in
a clear veil create tensions—visually, materially, and conceptually—between what is revealed and what is not about themselves and their works. Acting as both refusals and invitations, the works of Azadeh Elmizadeh, Ella Gonzales, Lotus L. Kang, and Audie Murray approach the threshold of visibility without ever becoming fully clear.
CONCRETEFeatured artists:
Robert Barry, Jason Hirata, and
Ghislaine LeungCurated by
Lekha JandhyalaThree artists, Robert Barry, Jason Hirata, and Ghislaine Leung, take
CONCRETE as a site to expose the unseen and indeterminate systems that construct and condition a viewing experience.
Mutable CyclesFeatured artist:
Joyce Joumaa, Iris Touliatou, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Marina Christodoulidou, and
Peter EramianCurated by
Ariana KalligaMutable Cycles is a group exhibition exploring the dismantling of public infrastructures in service of private profit. The featured artists turn to recent histories of financial fallout and its aftermaths—from collective struggles over home foreclosures in Cyprus since 2012–13, to the 2019 solar energy boom in Lebanon—in order to think through debt, property, and the right to public goods. Mutable Cycles features work by Joyce Joumaa, Iris Touliatou, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Marina Christodoulidou, and Peter Eramian.
IntercessionFeatured artists:
Lois Bielefeld, Ryan Kuo, Harris Rosenblum and Theresa Faison (for Transcendence Creative), and
Viktor TimofeevCurated by
Audrey MinIntercession considers a spirit that seems to animate the digital devices that help us participate in pleasure, social life, ethics, and politics. Despite—or perhaps because of—the intimacy of this human-computer partnership, digital technology often seems to act as if by magic or prayer. Works by Lois Bielefeld, Ryan Kuo, Harris Rosenblum and Theresa Faison (for Transcendence Creative), and Viktor Timofeev play with digital interfaces and the significance of their role in analog life.
Would We Recognize Ourselves UnbrokenFeatured artists:
Simon Benjamin, Keli Safia Maksud, and
Suneil SanzgiriCurated by
Sibia SaranganWould We Recognize Ourselves Unbroken brings together recent works by Simon Benjamin, Keli Safia Maksud, and Suneil Sanzgiri that assert lived experience and collective memory over official histories. Drawing from archives and long-term research, the featured artists subvert entrenched paradigms of temporality and identity by working across past and present, fiction and truth—or what we have come to believe is the truth.
Lovett/Codagnone: Each Man Kills the Thing He LovesFeatured artists:
Lovett/Codagnone and
Julie TolentinoCurated by
Andrew SuggsEach Man Kills the Thing He Loves draws from the archive of artist team Lovett/Codagnone to foreground the transmission of queer lineages, specifically as impacted and shaped by HIV/AIDS. In addition to the re-creation of Lovett/Codagnone’s studio walls—featuring hundreds of pieces of ephemera related to queer histories—Closer, a Lovett/Codagnone performance from 1998, is archived and given new form by longtime collaborator Julie Tolentino.
àArtists:
Manon de Boer, Poul Kjærholm, Pierre Leguillon, Raimundas Malašauskas, John Menick, Ricardo Valentim, and
Javier VillanuevaA conversation about time takes the form of an exhibition at the Hessel Museum of Art.
Right now I’m not thereFeatured artists:
Narcisa Hirsch, Luiz Roque, and
Rosario ZorraquínCurated by
Micaela VindmanRight now I’m not there focuses on the process of bringing inner aspects of oneself to the surface. Drawing from video, sculpture, and painting the works of Narcisa Hirsch, Luiz Roque, and Rosario Zorraquín explore what happens when fragmented inner worlds are shaped through visual media and brought into our public world. The exhibition reveals the strangeness and discomfort of sharing what is most personal—and the trouble we might have with recognizing what we find.
Madeline Gins: Infinite SystemsFeatured artists:
Madeline GinsCurated by
Charlotte YoukilisInfinite Systems presents works by Madeline Gins (1941–2014), an artist and writer whose practice tested the limits of human cognition and sensory perception. This exhibition—the first solo presentation on Gins—shifts the focus from her collaborations with her husband, Arakawa, under the moniker Arakawa+Gins, to her rarely shown independent practice. A selection of her writing and visual works from the 1960s to the 2000s, many exhibited for the first time, are displayed alongside archival materials, including ephemera, manuscripts, and photographs drawn from the Reversible Destiny Foundation.
The graduate student-curated exhibitions and projects at CCS Bard are part of the requirements for the master of arts degree and are made possible with support from Lonti Ebers; Robert Soros and the Enterprise Foundation; the Rebecca and Martin Eisenberg Student Exhibition Fund; the Mitzi and Warren Eisenberg Family Foundation; the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation; The Wortham Foundation; the Board of Governors of the Center for Curatorial Studies; and the Center’s Patrons, Supporters, and Friends.