Three Boston institutions—Massachusetts College of Art and Design (MassArt), School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) at Tufts University, and the Masters of Fine Arts at Boston University (BU)—are hosting a citywide Open Studios event, providing fine arts students with the unique opportunity to present their work to a broader audience. MassArt and BU will host their event on Saturday, March 1, and SMFA at Tufts will open on Friday, March 7.
Open Studios 2025 aims to offer a look at the practices of student artists working in Boston and foster an exchange between them and the broader community. Along with faculty organizers, student representatives organized the event by working as liaisons. These individuals facilitated communication among the three universities and managed the initiative’s logistical aspects, including the creation of promotional materials, sponsored by the Wagner Foundation.
“The goal is to create community and support for the students at the three different schools. It’s a way of making connections, [and] giving the students a sort of bigger community to build from,” said Laurel Nakadate, professor of photography and director of graduate studies at Tufts University. Nakadate mentioned this was the first time an initiative like this was undertaken—a sentiment echoed by other event organizers.
Daniela Rivera, a visiting professor of painting at Boston University, said that artists were the “DNA of the city” and emphasized that the cultural voices of these artists should be “visible” and “celebrated.”
Aghigh Afkhami, a second-year student in the photography MFA program at MassArt, creates images that conjure the past. Originally from Iran (where she also received her undergraduate degree), Afkhami describes her home country as “the land that shaped my being.” Afkhami’s work centers around homeland and memory. Achieved through mostly grayscale images, Afkhami’s series Lov captures acts of remembering and detachment, spurred by migration. She intentionally obscures the locations of her images using close crops of her subjects, often shooting in infrared or black and white. In some photos, Afkhami includes lines of text created by Sharpie or spray paint. In Iran, she explained, the government attempted to conceal political messages graffitied on walls. Despite their effort to erase the words, the writing still peeped through. When she came to America, Afkhami carried this thought. Now, she was experimenting with shrouding people in her photos, but not in totality. She still wants to leave a glimpse.
“My work is mostly about me: my memories, my life experience, and at the same time, it’s about my generation in Iran,” Afkhami said. “There’s this huge struggle of youth, the economy, mandatory laws, and at the same time you’re trying to survive and experience the joy of life.”
Next to Afkhami’s studio inside the Kennedy building at MassArt, Andrew Zou, also a second-year MassArt student, is working on a chronological series of photographs. In Zou’s To Love, To Remember, seasons provide the backdrop for images of Zou’s parents. Shot from 2020 to 2024, these photographs portray the annual transitions in Jiangxi Province, China. In summer, Zou’s parents shed their layers. In winter, they gain them back.
At Tufts University, MiJung Yun is one of approximately eighty SMFA students participating in the Open Studios event. Yun’s large abstract drawings cover the wall space in the orderly, brightly lit studio. Two plushies are curled on the grey couch in the corner, belonging to Yun’s daughter, who frequents the studio. Her daughter appears in a nearby self-portrait; they’re both depicted as tigers (the daughter as the cub, of course). This piece is featured in Yun’s Volcano series, which she began creating using inexpensive ninety-nine-cent pens, often received for free at conferences, which were later swapped for Micron and ink pens for longevity.
Yun’s work is engulfed in lines, shadows, and abstract curves that resemble waves. The complex drawings were inspired by Yun’s father who had been a volcanologist before he retired. Far away, the lines appear amorphous while making up forms that resemble plumes of smoke. Up close, they’re something else entirely; a change brought by a new perspective. The individual shapes take on their own geometric forms, becoming their own isolated entity.
“[My father] has a lot of extensive research resources, but no one can continue [his work] … so I thought, I can,” Yun said. She’s done it in her way: as a visual artist. Using photos that her father shared to complete the initial sketches, Yun references his work to aid in composition. From there, she proceeds to fill the space intuitively.
At Boston University, first-year painting candidate Scout Curtin has been serving as a student representative for the inaugural Open Studios, working collaboratively with representatives from the other two schools. Originally from New York, Curtin expressed that painting is a relatively “solitary practice,” and said that the opportunity for cross-institution connection inspired her to get involved.
In her studio, there is a rocking chair, a light with a lampshade with blonde hair extensions attached, and Curtin’s sizable canvases. Curtin, who entered the program with a focus on portraiture, was “thinking more about the body, how the body relates to space, and what the experience of living in a body is like.”
Curtin’s paintings are self portraits that capture her own body from different angles.There was her face (straight-on and from the side), her braided hair, her arms in motion, and her curled-up body. She is interested, she tells me, in individual people, groups of people, and how they connect. The act of having a body was the only experience she could “totally own.” And yet, that birthed a larger conversation: how much of that was true? Though these considerations manifest in Curtin’s paintings now, she admits she is in the early stages of her work, and that her art is “changing rapidly and constantly evolving.”
“It’s easy to forget that you should be in conversation with the [city] you’re in and with other artists,” Curtin said. “[This event] is a student-led opportunity to have these connections…which is also not something we always get to do.”
“Right now, it feels like a very vibrant time to be an artist in Boston, and I’m very hopeful for the kind of galleries and speakers and curators that are now in the city,” S. Billie Mandle, associate professor of photography at MassArt, said. “This is an attempt to bring all of our MFA students into that vibrancy, and to sort of break down some of the barriers that exist between the institutions and the larger communities.”
Open Studios will be held on Saturday, March 1 at MassArt’s Kennedy Building, 625 Huntington Ave. from 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM and BU at 808 Commonwealth Ave from 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM. The SMFA at Tufts will host Open Studios on Friday March 7 at 160 St Alphonsus St. from 3:00 PM to 8:00 PM. Details and registration here.
