There may be an simple heaviness to 2025. In her video work “What is Burden” (2025), artist Hannah Bang explores this weight. Projected onto the ultimate drawing, the four-hour piece captures the performer within the course of of constructing it, persevering with even because the paper regularly tears, enjoying with concepts of temporality and flux. How can artwork assist us navigate the tough modifications of 2025?
In Re:Turning, the Parsons Positive Arts MFA present curated by P! Krishnamurthy, college students like Bang strive their hand. The ensuing artworks don’t level out the plain, nor supply express political critique, as a lot as they gesture in the direction of methods to bear the flux, to mourn it, to course of it, and possibly discover an emotional middle to maintain coming again to.
Hannah Bang, “What is Burden?” (2025)
Andrew Samuel Harrison, for example, creates sculptures that play with gravity. In “Hypervisibility: Systems of Support 5” (2024–25), a concrete slab leans precariously however stably towards the wall. It calls for a double-take from a viewer — is that secure, or is it about to fall? — cleverly discovering an surprising middle. The lean takes on new layers of that means for Harrison as an artist navigating a congenital asymmetry between his left and proper sides brought on by Poland Syndrome, echoing the incongruous equilibrium present in lots of his works.
Andrew Samuel Harrison, “Hypervisibility: Systems of Support 5, (2024–25)
Sumaiya Saiyed offers a kinetic sculpture in which braided hair repeatedly twists upwards only to fall back down again. “I wanted to look at hair as a commodity and how it’s violently extracted from the body in Pakistan and Southeast Asia,” Saiyed instructed Hyperallergic. The worldwide wig commerce underpays these girls for his or her hair, upcharges the top shopper in a wealthy nation, and greedily pockets the distinction. The kinetic sculpture darkly alludes to how capitalists maintain coming again to take advantage of the brand new hair development. It additionally performs with the flux of the braid repeatedly reaching its breakpoint and falling.
Sumaiya Saiyed, “زلفوں کی زنجیر” (Zulfon Ki Zanjeer / Chains of Tresses, 2025), animated gif by writer
Yeabsera Tab’s “still we are water” (2023–25) combines ceramic espresso cups she made by hand and scattered throughout the gallery flooring with a projected video of a efficiency by which she sows chickpea and occasional hulls whereas talking to kin about rising up in a small neighborhood in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, maybe alluding to the significance of gatherings within the upkeep of a group’s reminiscence.
Yeabsera Tabb led a standard Ethiopian espresso ceremony on April 13, 2025.
In accordance with such concepts, throughout her April 13 occasion on the gallery, Tabb created a “coffee circle” round her set up, pouring the drink and facilitating a dialog within the Ethiopian espresso custom. It’s customary inside this conference to brew bigger portions and invite neighbors and the broader group, with completely different households internet hosting the morning, afternoon, and night espresso hours in rural areas. Tabb gives this shared ritual, which bridges variations between Ethiopia’s multi-ethnic communities and syncopates the rhythm of each day work with moments of relaxation and connection, as a solution to climate the flux.
Yeabsera Tabb, “still we are water” (2023–25)
The previous Ethiopian proverb “The same water never runs into the same river” means that change is as inevitable as it’s pure. This yr feels fairly unnatural up to now, however moral judgments apart, the deeper query is about how we will relate to main shifts past our management. As this thought-provoking exhibition suggests, it might be our attitudes towards flux that may make or break our yr.
Felisa Nguyen, “Something I Can Hold” (2024)
Shangari Mwashighadi, “Untitled” (2025), assemblage
Religion Henderson, “Untitled” (2023)
Spencer Strauss, “The Middle” (2025)
Jinghui Chen, “Celestial Archipelago” (2025)
Sona Lee, “What Dreams May Come” (2025)
Qasim Ali Hussain, “Between Flesh & Spirit: The Nafs Awakens” (2025), video, 22:45 minutes
Teresa Olds, “The Waiting Room” (2025)
Felisa Nguyen, “Promise of an Orchid” (2024)
Danielle Sargeant, element of “Does Water Carry Memory?” (2025)
Felisa Nguyen, “Work for an Axe” (2025)
Re:Turning, the Parsons Positive Arts 2025 MFA Thesis Exhibition, continues at Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Gallery on the primary flooring of the Sheila C. Johnson Design Middle at The New College (2 West thirteenth Road, Greenwich Village, Manhattan) by means of April nineteenth. The exhibition was curated by P! Krishnamurthy.
