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WORLD WIDE WONDERS

While MICA is proudly rooted in Baltimore, its community extends well beyond the city’s limits — building cultural vitality and connections, public wellness, and social equity on a worldwide stage. And in an increasingly global society, where both lives and professions are impacted by diverse experiences and perspectives, this kind of engagement is more important than ever.

Here you’ll find just a few of the artists and designers from MICA who exemplify this contemporary reality. They are creatives whose achievements are international, who are cultivating understanding of society’s shared values on global levels, and whose work has not only stood the test of time, it has preserved one of the most important cultural events of the last century.

CAPTURING CULTURE

MARILYN NANCE ’96, CELEBRATED PHOTOGRAPHER WHO CHRONICLED FESTAC ’77, PUBLISHES LAST DAY IN LAGOS

MICA alumna Marilyn Nance ’96 publishes Last Day In Lagos

The Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture, held in Lagos, Nigeria in 1977, was more than a festival — it was a pivotal moment in Pan-African culture in the 20th century, transcending similar events both before and after. Known as FESTAC ’77, it lasted for a month and showcased over 15,000 musicians, artists, writers, dancers, and cultural leaders representing 56 African nations and countries of the African Diaspora — including Stevie Wonder, Winnie Owens, Ellsworth Ausby, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Queen Mother Moore, Les Ballets Africains, and Dudu Pukwana.

MICA alumna Marilyn Nance ’96 (Photography MFA), fresh from an undergraduate degree and taking her first trip abroad, attended as the official photographer for the American contingent of the festival’s North American delegation. Her work resulted in one of FESTAC ’77’s largest and most important visual archives. She recently drew from the collection to publish Last Day in Lagos, which chronicles the exuberance, intensity, and significance of this landmark occasion.

Edited by Oluremi C. Onabanjo, Last Day in Lagos contains never before seen photographs, contending gracefully with the archive’s scope of 1,500 images and locating Nance’s perspective within the context of geopolitical, historical, and aesthetic discourses of the Black Atlantic, postcolonial Nigeria, and Black Arts Movement in the US.

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TYPOGRAPHY RULES

GRAPHIC DESIGN MFA PROJECTS
STAND OUT AT STA 100

MICA’s MFA in Graphic Design were selected for the Society of Typographic Arts (STA) 100 show

Every year, the Society of Typographic Arts (STA) 100 show recognizes 100 greatest examples of typographic design excellence by professionals and students from around the world. In the recently announced 2022 STA 100, 19 projects from across MICA’s MFA in Graphic Design were selected.

FESTIVALS

PUBLICATIONS

BRAND SHIFTS

Richa Poddar ’22 | Copperblock Brand Shift

Bao Hu ’22 | Daily Brand Shift

Molane Hu ’23 | Trident Brand Shift

INFOGRAPHICS

Christina Chahyadi ’23 | In the Long Run Biodiagram

Shuang Wu ’23 | Life Choices That Led Me to Graphic Design

TYPEFACES

Sara Austin ’23 | This Might Be the Place / Millennial Sans (Thesis)

Megan Irwin ’22 | Timestamp Typeface (Thesis)

ALUMNI ABROAD

ACCLAIMED MICA ARTISTS PREMIER THEIR WORK IN EUROPE, ASIA

Amy Sherald ’04 at Hauser & Wirth in London

Amy Sherald ’04 (LeRoy E. Hoffberger School of Painting)’s first solo show in Europe — at Hauser & Wirth in London — wraps up at the end of December. Currently considered one of the defining contemporary portraitists in the US, Sherald unveiled a suite of new paintings for the exhibition, titled Amy Sherald: The World We Make, earlier this fall. The same work will go on to show in Monaco with Hauser & Wirth in 2023.

Sherald is acclaimed for her paintings of Black Americans that have become landmarks in the grand tradition of social portraiture — a tradition has for far too long excluded the Black men, women, families, and artists whose lives have been inextricable from public and politicized narratives. As Sherald said, "Sharing these paintings in Europe is an opportunity for me to reflect on how the tradition of portraiture finds continuity as one of several lineages alive in my work."

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The work of Geof Oppenheimer ’96 (General Sculptural Studies BFA) can be seen at UCCA Beijing beginning December 23, 2022 in the solo show People in Reverse. The artist, who has exhibited throughout the US and Europe, as well as in Saudi Arabia, is exhibiting for the first time in China.

Featuring new work commissioned by UCCA and Diriyah Biennale Foundation, People in Reverse will center on cast statues of three archetypal figures: a businessman, a flag bearer, and an observer, each situated within an immersive spatial context formed from walls, floor coverings, raw materials, and mass-produced projects. The work speaks to growing concerns over symbolism, figuration, and character in the modern social economy.

INTER-
NATIONAL EXCHANGE

STUDENTS FROM MICA, BRASSART FRANCE TO MAKE COLLABORATIVE ANIMATIONS

Jennie Lobato ’00 was among L’Oréal Paris’ 2022 Women of Worth

MICA Animation students will soon join forces with peers from BRASSART school in Montpellier, France to produce participatory animated sequences as part of the inaugural Animation Jam at the FIAF Animation First Festival. To be held in New York from January 27-29, Animation First is the only US festival dedicated to showcasing French animation.

Teams of students from both schools will be given 48-hours to complete an animation sequence. The teams will work from their own campuses beginning on January 28, and audiences can check their progress via Twitch during the festival or online. The resulting animations will be unveiled during the festival’s closing night program on January 29.

GLOBAL HONORS

RECENT GRADS RECEIVE INTERNATIONAL RECOGNITION FOR THESIS WORK

Innovative, relevant, and ambitious, thesis and capstone projects from across MICA’s graduate programs consistently demonstrate the impact creativity can have at home and around the world — as demonstrated by honors garnered for thesis work from Saskia Kahn ’22 ( Photographic & Electronic Media MFA), Akshita Chandra ’21 (Graphic Design MFA), and Jes Standefer ’21 (Data Analytics and Visualization MPS).

Unique Robinson's feature in Baltimore Magazine

Kahn was recently announced as a winner at the 2022 Global Design Graduate show, presented by ARTS THREAD in collaboration with GUCCI. With over five thousand graduating students entering work, it is the largest ever online showcase of graduating artists and designers worldwide.

Recognized as the photography winner in the Fine Art / Photography / Craft category, Khan’s work, Skatepark Baltimore, is a collaborative photo project about a self-created youth community that worked to make a city skateboard park a more inclusive space. Skaters who felt uncomfortable using the park alone realized the need to work cooperatively in order to claim this space as safe — particularly those who identified as transgender, gender-nonconforming, Black-femme, women, and/or queer.

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Emotional Gamut, the graphic design thesis project by Chandra, garnered the Discovery of the Year prize at the 2022 Indigo Design Awards. Celebrating cutting edge visual design from around the world, the awards honor practitioners in the fields of graphic, digital, and mobile design, design for social change, branding, and freelance. This year’s winners hailed from Austria, Germany, India, the Netherlands, Turkey, and the US.

Chandra’s project presents visual analogies for the seven primary emotions — love, surprise, joy, fear, sadness, anger, disgust — each having a palette of colors as well as unique shapes and typography. Depicting the complex interconnections of emotional experiences, Emotional Gamut comes together as a visual system that helps to express how emotions overlap to become rich and layered.

Saskia Kahn ’22 announced as a winner at the 2022 Global Design Graduate show

Standefer’s work, Slowly Drowning, was shortlisted for an Information is Beautiful Award. The honors celebrate the outstanding work of data visualization, infographic, and interactive and information art practitioners from around the world.

Through a series of visualizations, Slowly Drowning explores the increase in drinking amongst American women as well as the physical and mental toll drinking causes. The piece provides a better understanding of problematic drinking, how prolonged alcohol consumption has irreversible and fatal consequences, and what steps could be taken to prevent long-term damage.

PRIME DESTINATIONS

MICA ARTISTS TAKE PART IN INTERNATIONAL SHOWCASES

TLaloC ’18 selected for Pictoline’s Third Biennial of Illustration

The work of Eduardo Corral, a.k.a. TLaloC, ’18 (Illustration Practice MFA), current faculty in MICA’s Illustration BFA program, was selected for Pictoline’s Third Biennial of Illustration, held in Mexico City. The exhibition is an unprecedented effort in Latin America to recognize, promote, and consolidate illustration as an artistic expression.

This edition of the event included participants from 20 different countries. TLaloC’s work, Los extranjeros, illustrates an abandoned place inhabited by "everyday aliens," humanoid-looking characters who seem intimidating at first but who on closer examination tell a story of life, recovery, change, rebuilding, and resilience. The project stems from the illustrator’s official VISA status "Alien with Extraordinary Ability."

Baltimore art gallery Galerie Myrtis is showcasing work of MICA alumni at this year’s Venice Biennale. Founded by Myrtis Bedolla — who received curatorial training through MICA’s Open Studies and Exhibition Development Seminar — Galerie Myrtis is the first Black woman-owned gallery invited to participate in the Venice Biennale-affiliated exhibition, Personal Structures: Time, Space, and Existence.

The gallery’s exhibition, The Afro-Futurist Manifesto: Blackness Reimagined, includes work by ceramics artist and arts educator Morel Doucet ’13 (Ceramics BFA); figure painter Monica Ikegwu ’20 (Painting BFA); and Arvie Smith ’92 (LeRoy E. Hoffberger School of Painting), who is also a former director of the Hoffberger program.