Meet our MFA students

photo of the artist at work in an industrial space

Chrystine Rayburn

I am a sound collector and maker who listens to thresholds and entanglements of institutional and environmental spaces. Through archiving, electroacoustic composition, and installation I explore how organizing and manipulating sound can transform and complicate the boundaries of source, embodiment, and memory.

Leilei Xia

Leilei Xia was born in Guangzhou, China. She is a multimedia artist who works in tactile art, experimental animations, video art, and participatory collective art. As one of the editors of independent science zine Icosa Magazine and the founder of tactile art collective Tactileye, Leilei explores how tactility and bodily feelings are manifested in different medium, and is interested in combining the process and the result of art together to make art not as a noun but as a verb.

Her workshop has been hosted in Institute of Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, The Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, and her films and animation has been awarded or selected in Ann Arbor Film Festival, Stop Trik Animation Festival, Berlin Female Film Festival, Paris International Animation Festival, and so on. Her works has been shown in exhibited internationally in New York, Geensboro, Richmond, Guangzhou, and other cities. She was also one of the speaker in TEDxVCU 2023. She holds an BFA from Rhode Island School of Design, and is currently pursuing MFA at Virginia Commonwealth University .

Website: www.leileixia.com

Instagram: www.instagram.com/lilyxia99

Wren Tiffany

Wren Tiffany

Wren Tiffany (he/they) is an Richmond-based video artist and drag king. Through glitch art, digital performances, and experimental non-fiction, their work explores the wackiness of binary gender roles, Gen Z nihilism, memory, and queerness. Their current research is informed by their transmasculine experiences with HRT (hormone replacement therapy) and the intersections of transness with contemporary drag culture through a documentary lens. With a defiant flamboyance, their short films, animations, and installations reflect both the radical trans joy of visibility and the entangled temporalities associated with living in a historically puritanical American culture. By incorporating genre-bending techniques in their videos, they seek to dismantle the confining nature of labels by highlighting the limitations of this heteronormative dichotomy.

Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/ladyboner

Substack: https://ladyboner.substack.com

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/ladyboner

Quinn Standley

Quinn Standley

Quinn Standley (B. Phoenix, Arizona) is an experimental artist who explores integrated imaging technologies to ontologically research the nature of being, time, and space. His practice investigates the materiality of the universe, the mechanics of consciousness, and ecological interconnectedness. His philosophical, critical, and introspective multimedia projects are simultaneously other-worldly and yet deeply human.

Website: https://www.quinnstandley.com/

Yvonne LeBien

Yvonne LeBien is a trans poet and performer. They have published books with GenderFail. Their music/sound can be found at yvonnelebien.bandcamp.com

Weitong Sun

Stories, once created, will never end. Same as the tales of the digital world. Weitong “ShanMu” Sun (Born in Jinan, China) is an experimental artist who explores the methodology of programming languages and its influence on our sense of history and time. Her practice provokes a conversation between the beholder and the work itself.

Instagram: Shanmu_sun