Yale School of Art & NYU Abu Dhabi launch pilot Post-MFA Residency Exchange

The Yale School of Art and NYU Abu Dhabi are excited to announce the launch of a pilot Post-MFA Residency Exchange Program beginning in the Fall 2024 semester. One member of a recently graduated class from each institution will spend one academic semester, or approximately four months, on campus at the exchange school. The graduate from NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) will be provided a studio space at the Yale School of Art and the graduate from the Yale School of Art will be provided a studio space at NYUAD. Residents will participate in critiques, offer studio visits, lead a program as part of Interdepartmental Day, culminating in a presentation of works, works in progress, or preparatory work at the end of the residency at a gallery space on site. The resident will have access to campus programming, collections, libraries, and other campus resources. The exchange is intended to foster cross-cultural dialogue and expose recent graduates to global artist communities.

For the inaugural pilot year, the residents were nominated by each participating institution. Chinaedu Nwadibia, MFA ‘22, was selected among the recent School of Art graduates to travel to Abu Dhabi in Fall 2024, and Majd Alloush, NYUAD MFA ‘23, was selected among the recent NYUAD cohort as the first graduates to join us in New Haven to participate in this residency exchange.

Nwadibia will be arriving in Abu Dhabi in early September, and the School of Art looks forward to welcoming Alloush to New Haven in late August. Associate Dean Anoka Faruqee shared, “Recent MFAs will continue their research, practice and conversations, within a stimulating new community and setting, and with the flexibility that a fellowship year provides.”

Facilitating a time of transition for post-MFA residents into the professional world allows them to deepen their experimentation and research within a new and stimulating campus community. At the conclusion of this pilot program year, the Yale School of Art and NYU Abu Dhabi hope to continue this residency exchange so that future alumni might benefit from greater community support in the years following graduation.

About Chinaedu Nwadibia

I believe in the functions of portraiture, storytelling and the supernatural. The orality of my Nigerian and African American heritage has nurtured a healthy awareness of the power that is derived from intergenerational connection. I employ sculpture, performance and written works within my lifelong engagement with photography, enabling a multi-platform method of storytelling. By Illuminating spaces just out of view, I encourage a further investigation into how one perceives themselves and their surroundings. These explorations allow my practice to exist between the conventions of the historical archive and the inherited proverb and myth, while utilizing these frameworks to ground the work in the tangibility of the human experience.

Nwadibia holds a BA from Howard University (2011) and an MFA in Photography from the Yale School of Art (2022).

About Majd Alloush

Majd Alloush is a Syrian artist whose work spans multiple disciplines including printmaking, sculpture, photography, moving image, installation, and performance. His creative practice challenges the notion of borders in concept, content, and medium, by exploring geopolitics, and social and environmental issues such as the ramifications of war and displacement. Alloush strategically creates work wherein multiple interpretations are possible, requiring the viewer’s own worldview to inform the meaning. His work is situated within contemporary hybrid practice, at the intersection of traditional processes and innovative methodology. Alloush holds a BFA from the University of Sharjah, Class of 2018, and an MFA in Art and Media from New York University Abu Dhabi, Class of 2023.

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