What Lovers Do: RISD MFA Painting Thesis Exhibition features the Rhode Island School of Design’s 2024 MFA Painting cohort. Artists include Aiza Ahmed, Ashley N. Bergner, Aaron Feltman, Christopher Huff, James Ming Johnson, Boluwatife Oyediran, Gonçalo Preto, Dylan Sheahan, Lily Taylor, and Zainab Zulfiqar.

What Lovers Do: Keeping and Being Kept
Curated and contributory text by Zoé Samudzi

“…what I fantasize in the system is quite modest…: I want, I desire, quite simply, a structure…As support, the structure is separated from desire: what I want, quite simply, is to be ‘kept’…”

Roland Barthes’s A Lover’s Discourse hews the amorous into discursive fragments: it is an emotional geography, a confrontation of the other who is loved but does not speak. The sentiments are choreographed and ordered within a landscape upon which one can imagine their own love(s), be it a site of romantic or platonic love, admiration, filial or paternal love, sexual desire, or a transformation of one’s craft or oneself into the love object.

Barthes’s aforementioned fragment describes a universe in which the amorous subject recognizes everyone and the world around him as being organized into a “practical and affective system” from which he is excluded. While the word “pigeonholed”—with its connotations of constraint, suffocation, restriction—is used over and over, the fragment title, Tutti Sistemati in Italian, means “all settled.” In their contributions, the works in What Lovers Do: Keeping and Being Kept comprise a collectively created sistema that a lover might make for themselves. Through abstraction and realism, portraiture and spatial interiors and exteriors, collage and carving, anatomical internality and built environments, the exhibition presents the cohort’s own creative intercourse: their affective entanglements with internal private and external public negotiations of intimacy and self-making, effectively producing their own aesthetic logics of arrangement.

About:

Aiza Ahmed (b. 1997, Lahore, Pakistan) earned her BFA at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, in 2020. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI, with an expected graduation year of 2024. Recent group exhibitions include Educate, Christie’s, New York, NY (2020); I Shouted my Laughter to the Stars, Aicon Gallery, New York, NY (2022); First Person, Franklin Parrasch Gallery, New York, NY (2023); Going Dutch: A Rembrandt Soirée, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca, NY (2017); Now Streaming, Rajiv Menon Contemporary, Los Angeles, CA (2024); In A Look, VM Art Gallery, Karachi, Pakistan (2021); Ladies Who Lunch, Dominion Gallery, Lahore, Pakistan (2021); among others. Upcoming group exhibitions include What Lovers Do: RISD MFA Painting Show, The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY (2024); New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA), New York, NY (2024); and Twelve Gates Arts, Philadelphia, PA (2024). Ahmed’s first solo exhibition in India is scheduled in 2025 at Chemould CoLab, an extension program of Chemould Prescott Road. She is the recipient of several awards, including the Graduate Commons Grant Fellowship, Providence, RI (2024); the Rhode Island School of Design Fellowship, Providence, RI (2022); The Edith Stone and Walter King Memorial Prize, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY (2019); and the David R. Bean Prize in Fine Arts, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY (2018). Ahmed is an alumnus of the William Kentridge & The Centre for the Less Good Idea, Providence, RI.

Ashley N. Bergner (b.1995, Knoxville, Tennessee) earned her BFA at The University of Tennessee in Knoxville, TN, in 2019. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI (expected 2024).

Aaron Feltman (b.1998, Huntington, NY) is an artist living and working in Providence, RI. Feltman received his BFA at The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, PA, in 2020. Recent group exhibitions include Biomes, CCS Bard Hessel Museum, Annandale-On-Hudson, NY (2024); A Room with a View, Vardan Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2023); In the Heat of the Night, Andrew Reed Gallery, New York, NY (2023); The Bathroom Show, Monya Rowe Gallery, New York, NY (2022); and AXA Art Prize, New York Academy of Fine Arts, New York, NY (2020). Feltman is an alumnus of the Yale Norfolk Residency, Norfolk, CT (2019).

Christopher Huff earned his BFA at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD, in 2020. He is currently pursuing his MFA in Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI, with an expected graduation year of 2024. Recent solo exhibitions include Platform Exhibition, Unit London, London, UK (2022); and Cathexis, Pinkard Gallery, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD (2019). Recent group exhibitions include In the Heat of the Night, Andrew Reed Gallery, New York, NY (2023); Horizon Line, Andre Reed Gallery, Miami, FL (2023); Charm City, Asya Geisberg Gallery, New York, NY (2022); and A Good Guest, Reginald F. Lewis Museum, Baltimore, MD (2020), among others. He is the recipient of several awards, including the MFA Gelman Scholarship, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI (2022) and the Nicolette Ausschnitt ’66 Scholarship Award, Rhode Island School of Design (2023).

James Ming Johnson (b. 1990, Bangkok, Thailand) earned his BA in Film and Media at Stanford University, Stanford, CA and is pursuing his MFA in Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI (expected 2024). Johnson previously studied at the Art Students League in New York, NY (2016), before attending the post-baccalaureate program at Brandeis University in Waltham, MA.

Boluwatife Oyediran (b. 1997, Ogbomosho, Nigeria) studied Fine and Applied Arts at Emmanuel Alayande College of Education in Oyo, Nigeria, in 2016. He is currently pursuing his MFA in Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI, with an expected graduation year of 2024. Recent solo exhibitions include Point of Correction, Afikaris Gallery, Paris, France (2022); For Boiz Like Me Who’ve Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf, Gallery1957, Accra, Ghana (2022); Recent group exhibitions include The New African Portraiture: Shariat Collections, Kunsthalle Krems, Donau, Austria (2023); Contemporary Redefined: Africa Today, Sotheby’s, Tel Aviv, Israel (2023); The Sound of Our Souls, UTA Artist Space, Los Angeles, CA (2023); Unlimited I, Gallery 1957, Accra, Ghana (2022); and 1-54 NYC, New York, NY (2022). Oyediran’s work resides in the collections of the Institute Museum of Ghana, Elliot Perry Collection, Amir Shariat Collection, and David Adjaye Collection. He is the recipient of several awards, including the Presidential Fellowship, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI (2024); and the Best Student in Drawing Prize, Emmanuel Alayande College of Education, Oyo, Nigeria (2016). Oyediran is an alumnus of the Noldor Artist Residency, Accra, Ghana (2022); and an Artist-in-Residence, Gallery 1957, Accra, Ghana (2022).

Gonçalo Preto (b.1991, Lisbon, Portugal) is an artist living and working in Providence, RI. Preto received his BFA Faculty of Fine Arts of Lisbon in Lisbon, Portugal, in 2012. He is currently pursuing his MFA in Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI, with an expected graduation year of 2024. Recent solo exhibitions include A Cadência de uma Chama, Galeria Madrogoa, Lisbon, Portugal (2024); Middle Finger Pedestrians, Galeria Madragoa, Lisbon Portugal (2019); and LIMBO, Museu Carlos Machado, Ponta Delgada (São Miguel), Azores, Portugal (2019),  among others. Recent group exhibitions include MICROPOLÍTICAS, CACE at Centro de Arquelogia de Beja, Portugal (2024); Blind Taste, ARBAG, Lisbon, Portugal (2024); Silvers in the Void, MAMOTH, London, UK (2023); In the Heat of the Night, Andrew Reed Gallery, New York, NY (2023); BIG OBJECTS, Marvin Gardens, New York, NY (2023); Figuration through Abstraction, Andrew Reed Gallery, Miami, FL (2022); among others. He is the recipient of several awards, including a Fulbright FCC Grant (2022); Rhode Island School of Design Fellowship, Providence, RI (2022); Hopper Prize Finalist (2023); among others.

Zoé Samudzi is the Charles E. Scheidt Visiting Assistant Professor of Genocide Studies and Genocide Prevention at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University. She holds a PhD in Medical Sociology from the University of California, San Francisco in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences. Zoé is an associate editor with Parapraxis Magazine, and an art critic whose work has appeared in Art in America, Bookforum, The New Inquiry, The Architectural Review, The New Republic, and other outlets.

Dylan Sheahan (b. 1996, Red Bank, NJ) earned his BFA from the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth in Dartmouth, MA. He is currently pursuing his MFA in Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI, with an expected graduation year of 2024.

Lily Taylor (b. 1993, New York, NY) is an artist living and working in Providence, RI. Taylor received her BA in English from Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT, in 2016. Recent group exhibitions include Painting with Butter, Sol Koffler Gallery, RISD, Providence, RI (2023); Painting Triennial, Woods Gerry Gallery, RISD, Providence, RI (2022); and Hot Box, Flatiron Project Space, School of Visual Arts, New York, NY (2022).

Zainab Zulfiqar (b. 1996, Lahore, Pakistan) earned their BFA at the National College of Arts in New York, NY, in 2021. They are currently pursuing their MFA in Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI, with an expected graduation year of 2024. Recent group exhibitions include Liminal Spaces, Dastaangoi Gallery, Dubai, United Arab Emirates (2022); Liberating Arts in Guantanamo Bay, IVS Gallery, Karachi, Pakistan; And so it Happened, T2F Gallery, Karachi, Pakistan, among others. Zulfiqar is the recipient of the Roger and Gayle Mandle Presidential Fellowship, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI.