in Partnership with Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU)

Contact Program DirectorS Susie Quillinan or SYOWIA KYAMBI
by EMAIL or sign up for one-to-one meeting here.

Intro
Structure
CURRICULUM
labs
TESTIMONIALS

The one-year low-residency MFA

Our new, One-Year Master of Fine Arts (MFA) Creative Practice is for anyone with an advanced creative practice (10 years +) with a specific research project or question/s they want to examine in order to develop their work. The MFA is a low-residency, self-directed, creative research-based project in which writing is an integral contributor, culminating in a public presentation, which may include exhibition, a publication, reading, performance, screening, or other form of dissemination of new work and thesis. Led by your research question/s, the project is a combination of your praxis and reflection where your writing—a thesis or exegesis of 6,000-8,000 words—actively contribute to the creative work itself.

Situated Research, Global Community

Mastery is not expansive enough to describe what encompasses our MFA. Fixed academic nomenclature such as “mastery” (a holdover from colonial ways of thinking) is a contested notion at Transart. We aim to de-centre the idea of individual mastery and instead encourage tentacular, inter-dependent research deeply engaged with trans-local, more-than-human ontologies, intersectional feminist and queer subjectivities, collaborative and activist practices and education as a site for staging the future.

This MFA supports you where you live and work while connecting you to people, practices, ideas and ways of being beyond the current scope of your praxis. With opportunities to exhibit, present, screen or publish internationally to a global community of peer and public discourse, the program also encourages you to deepen your engagement with your local community: to practice, research, present and think with the specificity of where you live and work. Transart believes in moving away from the model of global art centers and moving towards supporting generative environments of creative practice throughout the world, on and offline. We believe creative practitioners are vital agents in society and seek to support creative research that contributes to the ecologies of knowledge needed to address the eco-social challenges faced by our worlds, recognizing that those challenges are unequally distributed.

This program fosters intense focus, critical awareness and care towards your practice. Supported and guided by advisors; powered by topically relevant seminars, nurtured by guests sharing diverse practices, research methodologies and ways of knowing; and accompanied by peers from distinct geographies, positions and fields, you will deepen your praxis and hone your independent research focus. 

Expansive, Interdisciplinary Approach

We define this as 10+ years of experience in making, curating, designing, writing, performing, educating, publishing, instituting or any combination of these. Your practice may be hyper-focused on a particular discipline, or it may be a non-medium specific praxis of interconnected explorations. You might be exhibiting in galleries or the public sphere; working online, in academia or alternative spaces. You might work at the intersection of science and art, curating and agriculture, dance and technology or any other interdisciplinary constellation. Transart’s MFA believes in disciplinary promiscuity and the complex, urgent and invigorating experience of listening, sharing and thinking with practitioners from diverse practices, positions and territories.

Nomadic low-residency

Transart has always welcomed practitioners working all over the world, supporting you where you are without requiring that you re-locate to undertake an MFA, develop a global network of peers, or have your practice supported by dedicated advisors. If you are living in rural Colombia or downtown Manila, on the outskirts of Nairobi or the middle of Brooklyn, we are interested in the form your practice takes where you live and work. We will support you as you deepen those roots, developing a sustainable praxis while also connecting you to a new community of peers worldwide. 

You are required to attend at least one residency at the close of the program to present your research publicly. Throughout the year you are also invited and encouraged to attend shorter residencies in different locations around the world.

This program encourages fieldwork through flexible study options, and accessibility for practitioners with domestic or other professional responsibilities. Monthly intensives take place online over weekends. Your advisory meeting schedules are designed by you in conversation with your advisors. Many Transart students already teach at the university level, so our summer residencies are scheduled as much as possible to work with breaks in academic calendars.