Collective Study
Cornell Image Text, MFA Thesis 2025
Curated by Meg Onli
September 10-14, 2025
Opening Wednesday September 10, 6-8pm
COLLECTIVE STUDY is an exhibition of recent work by the Image Text MFA 2025 graduates of Cornell University. Curated by Meg Onli, the show emerged alongside a shared reading of The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley—a novel of solitude, apocalypse, and futures undone—which served not as a directive but as a companion to the process of making. Rather than interpreting the novel directly, the artists engaged with its atmosphere and themes, allowing the act of collective reading to subtly inform their practices.
Working within a community of artists, the process of creating became entangled with conversation, shared research, and mutual influence. In this context, reading was not isolated or interpretive, but generative—a catalyst for new work shaped by collective attention. The resulting pieces reflect an ongoing dialogue between text and image, reading and making, solitude and collaboration.
Featuring works by artists Maddy Bremner, Nelis Franken, Catherine Gans, Danielle Garcia Tubo, Maxwell Harvey-Sampson, Crystal Lamar, Sara Minsky, Marie ́ Nobematsu-Le Gassic, Monica Regan, David Richards, Genevieve Sachs, Yonatan Schechner, Kamaria Shepherd, and Chris Stiegler, the exhibition showcases a wide range of media responding to Shelley’s elegy as both mirror and warning.
Some works are shaped by the novel’s lyricism and melancholy—others fracture its continuity, echoing its emotional and temporal instability. What emerges is not a spectacle of collapse, but an exploration of personal, political, and planetary vulnerability. Collective Study is both lament and provocation—an invitation to reimagine the past, confront the present, and question what remains as we move toward an uncertain future.
Collective Study coincides with Printed Matter’s New York Art Book Fair at MoMA PS1 and the launch of a radical re-issue of Shelley’s The Last Man, featuring interventions by each artist, published by Image Text Ithaca Press. Meg Onli will be in conversation with Lucy Ives in The Classroom on Sunday, September 14 at 3pm, accompanied by a performative reading by a group of the artists.
PROGRAMMING:
At Microscope:
Wednesday September 10, 6 to 8pm
Opening Reception
Saturday September 13, 2pm
Collective Reading, featuring Monica de la Torre with:
Marie ́ Nobematsu-Le Gassic
Monica Regan David Richards Genevieve Sachs
Chris Stiegler
At The Classroom at MoMA PS1:
Sunday September 14, 3pm
The Last Man with Meg Onli & Lucy Ives
Collective Reading by
Catherine Gans Danielle Garcia Tubo Marie ́ Nobematsu-Le Gassic
Monica Regan
The Image Text MFA at Cornell University is a low-residency program that brings together critically, culturally, and politically engaged practices in creative writing, visual media, and design for print and digital publication.