Ruskin School of Art MFA

Introducing the mfa cohort…. we’ve all been here in the studios for weeks making and thinking and settling in. Content from our activities coming to ur screens very soon

Introducing Angel Dan Rong | MFA Cohort 2026 @angel_rongdan Angel Dan Rong （荣丹）is a Chinese artist working across sculptures, installations, performances, imageries and sound. Her practice explores nonhuman-human relationships, Sympoiesis, posthuman relationality and uneven coexistence. Having lived in China, Australia, the Netherlands, and the UK, her diverse experiences inspire a continuous exploration of the nonhuman lifeforms that surrounds us. Angel unfolds ways of existing within and beyond habitual relationships with other lifeforms, creating immersive spaces that invite awareness of the present moment. Her practice entails motion, spontaneity, contingency, personal experiences, and uneven ethics–revealing shifting power dynamics within shared social hierarchies and offering new ways to perceive what surrounds us. Through anthropocentric critique and humour, she invites audiences to reconsider their position within multispecies entanglements and the overlooked conditions shaping ecological coexistence. In this accelerated society shaped by pre-existing norms, how do we reimagine with what’s overlooked? Angel enquires: how could she embody the perceptions and autonomy of nonhumans to expand human perceptual sensitivity and move beyond conventional structures?

good mourning - a solo presentation A study of the harvest, the decay, and the histories we bury in the garden. This body of work spans drawings from six months of watching things grow and fall apart (Oct 2025 – Apr 2026). I’d love to see you at the opening: Sunday, May 17th 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM 📍 Dolphin Gallery, St John’s College, Oxford

Introducing Bomi Kim MFA cohort 2026 // Bomi explores the meaning of existence upon the suspension bridge of love(a fragile yet vital link between life and death). Moving away from her previous works, where she concealed herself behind fictional characters, the artist has begun to strip away imaginary narratives to focus directly on the essence of her own subjectivity. By delicately layering thin glazes of oil paint, Bomi achieves a visual density reminiscent of a natural spring, capturing the fluid properties of water without its literal use. The lozenge patterns flowing across the canvas symbolise a sense of permanence with no discernible beginning or end. Within this flow, images of volcanic eruptions, grotesque animal forms, and deliberately erased traces manifest the existential dread and survival instincts of humans who dream of immortality despite their inherent finitude. The intentional act of applying and then rubbing away paint serves as a process of reinterpreting memories and emotions, drawing up pure desires from within. Letting go of the desperate grasp on the illusion of eternity, Bomi opts for the damp sensations of reality over the stasis of taxidermied perfection. These records, created as if strolling through a garden of the subconscious, represent a journey beyond the fragmented self to discover the essential being that exists in the here and now.

Introducing Shuge Ma (马书格) | MFA Cohort 2026 @shuge_ma Shuge Ma (b.1999, Beijing) is a Chinese artist currently on the MFA program at the Ruskin School of Art. Her practice encompasses painting, mixed-media installations and video. Her works focus on how those with “temporary immigration status” navigate themselves in the cultural gaps between different societies. In her practice, Shuge discusses the concept of “in between”, which she considers both her predicament and her inspiration. Shuge also explores the influence of contemporary art on people from various cultural and social backgrounds. Her life experiences in different countries have enabled Shuge to focus on the cultural differences between the West and the East, as well as between urban and rural areas. Shuge recreates the landscape of Chinese rural areas with artificial objects in Western galleries. At the same time, she brings contemporary art with items from local residents in Chinese rural areas. Through this approach, Shuge attempts to discuss the compatibility and conflict of cultural exchange.

Introducing Yan (刘彦琪) | MFA Cohort 2026 @pikexiaodi Yan (b. 2001, Beijing) is a Chinese artist working across performance, moving image, installation, and sound. His recent research focuses on “Chamber Rap,” a medium developed in collaboration with several contemporary composers (Yang Zhongtian, Xu He, Zhang Yang, Li Xiaoyun). Shaped by the influence of socialism, Yan engages Chamber Rap as a way to examine the relationship between contemporary art and entertainment. His practice is committed to advancing the accessibility of contemporary art, while asking how contemporary art might relate to its audiences. In his work, Yan places the “individual” in confrontation with vast structures such as history, mythology, and natural cycles, tracing processes of struggle, transformation, resistance, and drifting. Rather than constructing the individual as a stable or clearly defined subject, his practice foregrounds the fluidity and contradictions of human beings within complex realities, and the continual reconstruction of the individual in contemporary society. 📷: @alexakanarowski

Introducing Qi Baiting | MFA Cohort 2026 @qibai_700 Qi Baiting (亓百婷) is a Chinese artist currently based in the UK, focusing on sculpture, installation and painting. Her fascination with stargazing shapes the way she perceives her work - she sees her pieces as “constellations,” mapping time and space through a vertical cosmology. Living near forests and mountains has deepened her connection to natural philosophy, influencing her engagement with landscape and the spiritual dimension of art. Her practice centres on planetary time, material memory and nonlinear histories, shaped through research at the University of Oxford and supported by Linacre College and the Ruskin School of Art, often through interdisciplinary collaborations across art, science and cultural research. She holds an MA from the Royal College of Art and a BA from Renmin University of China. Her works have been exhibited internationally including Tate Modern(London), the Arsenal(Venice), University of Oxford , the Fitzwilliam Museum(Cambridge), Modern Art Oxford, Hive Center Contemporary Art and the Phoenix Center(Beijing), and was featured in Sculpture magazine’s Artist Independent Column.

Save the date! Join us at The Chapel, Brompton Cemetery for Qi Baiting’s 𝘏𝘰𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘋𝘢𝘺, 𝘏𝘰𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘕𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵. Exhibition opening on Saturday 23 May, 5-8pm, on view until Monday 25 May. @qibai_700 🪐 ‘I told Marta that each of us has two homes – one actual home with a fixed location in time and space, and a second that is infinite, with no address and no chance of being immortalized in architectural plans – and that we live in both of them simultaneously.’ — Olga Tokarczuk, House of Day, House of Night 🪐 Qi Baiting (亓百婷) is a Chinese artist currently based in the UK, focusing on sculpture, installation and painting. Her fascination with stargazing shapes the way she perceives her work - she sees her pieces as “constellations,” mapping time and space through a vertical cosmology. Living near forests and mountains has deepened her connection to natural philosophy, influencing her engagement with landscape and the spiritual dimension of art. Her practice centres on planetary time, material memory and nonlinear histories, shaped through research at the University of Oxford and supported by Linacre College and the Ruskin School of Art, often through interdisciplinary collaborations across art, science and cultural research. She holds an MA from the Royal College of Art and a BA from Renmin University of China. Her works have been exhibited internationally including Tate Modern, the Venice Arsenale, University of Oxford , the Fitzwilliam Museum, Hive Center Contemporary Art and the Phoenix Center in Beijing, and was featured in Sculpture magazine’s Artist Independent Column. @ruskin_school_art_oxford @ruskinmfa @rca_contemporaryartpractice Images courtesy of the artist. Curated by @cath_erine_li

a pot / a chosen ingredient / a chance to pause / a gathering Bring one ingredient and a story to share and simmer. Together we’ll cook a broth and enjoy a collaborative nourishing lunch. This event is open for Ruskin School of Art students only - keep your eyes peeled as we will be opening up to the wider community soon! 12.00-14.00 Project Space Ruskin School of Art (Bullingdon Road) Sign up using the link in our bio lots of love, Maya and Fatima

Public Knowledge is a community-centred cooking and eating research group by Fatima Butt and Maya Todd. Through shared workshops, we approach food as material - thinking through consumption, decay, labour and inheritance. What remains is not waste, but trace: of flavour, memory and connection, where what is taken in and what is left behind are held together.

Introducing Alexa Kanarowski | MFA Cohort 2026
@alexakanarowski Alexa Kanarowski (b.1999, Salt Lake City) merges craft and photography to examine how systemic structures define our contemporary landscape. Concerned with the quiet moments of the domestic banal, her work investigates vernacular landscape and craft heritage to surface moments of transparency that open onto the complex systems shaping our world. The topographies that Kanarowski inhabits are central to her practice. Whether she is investigating the geography of the front garden or the imposition of city blocks, her work is grounded in an attentiveness to place and its cultural residue. Kanarowski both accedes to and distances herself from the traditions of stained glass, drawing it into contemporary discourse while remaining attuned to its history and the demands of its labor. Her current work turns to hedges as a form of ecological and cultural border making, examining how these commonplace boundaries articulate larger questions of enclosure, temporality, and ownership.

Introducing Maya Todd | MFA Cohort 2026 @mayatoddstudio Maya Todd (b. 2000, Belfast) is an MFA candidate based at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford. Her practice moves across image, materiality and text, exploring the body as a porous and affective site through which both memory and emotion circulate. She is particularly interested in acts of crying and weeping, in which tears express both bodily phenomena and cultural inscriptions. These moments are largely defined as through which interior states become external and the boundary between self and world begins to shift. Todd approaches tears not as symbols but as an embodied and active matter. They leak / stain / crystallise / evaporate / leaving behind subtle traces while also participating in ongoing transformation. Her work attends to these residues of affect, often within domestic space, where emotional life settles into surfaces almost imperceptibly. Textiles, paper, hair, skin and food waste alongside other intimate structures become sites where acts of weeping are absorbed or held in suspension. Across her work, Todd returns to the question of how affect might be made visible without becoming static and stabilised.Through this attention towards lingering substances, her practice considers how bodies and materials remain entangled within historical power structures and how acts of weeping might be understood not only as expressions of loss, but as processes that connect across time. Based at Wadham College, she is a beneficiary of an Erna Plachte Scholarship and, along with her collaborator Fatima Butt, is a recipient of the Ruskin Research Fund for their ongoing project public(k) knowledge.