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About MFA Index

MFA Index is an online platform started by a consortium of MFA programs to showcase the work of their graduates whose studies were impacted by COVID-19.

The founding MFA programs are:
ArtCenter Graduate Art Department
California Institute of the Arts
Columbia University School of the Arts
Otis College of Art and Design
UPenn Weitzman School of Design
UCLA Department of Art
UChicago Department of Visual Arts
Yale School of Art

If you are an MFA student at one of the above schools and would like to participate, contact your department administrator to request to be added.

The platform is also now open to additional MFA programs. If you would like your school to join, or have any questions, contact us using this form.


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Site by R&R Studio

< Taylor CloughMercedes Cardenas >

Alex Zak

Yale
2021

Alex Zak (b. 1988) makes work that interrogates the flattening of culture in tourist imaginaries. Growing up in St. Petersburg, FL, Zak was raised with a familiarity to the labor and consumption that occurs within tourist economies. Using a wide variety of materials— be it found objects, sand, textiles, and wood—Zak reworks images and symbols informed by the desire and decadence of such locations to explore history, culture, and labor that is obscured. In doing so, they build and produce installations, sculptures, videos and performances simulating leisure space in collapse.
Zak Received both a BFA and a BAVCS from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2012) and recently received their MFA from Yale School of Art (2020). They have exhibited in Chicago, New York City, New Haven, Tampa, and Varanasi, India. Zak will be a Resident at Sculpture Space in Utica, NY in the summer of 2021.

Alex-zak.com

Indiscriminate Collector
2021
47" x 16" x 30"
Copper with silver brazing, pen shell mother of pearl, epoxy clay, monitor, video

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