Painting + Printmaking graduate student Kevin Hopkins won first place at the 11th annual MFA Exhibition Online, which featured his work, “Stay in or Stay Out.”
In his submission, Hopkins wrote:
My practice centers on creating effigies that represent Black American individuals, infused with a syncretic magic drawn from Lowcountry mythologies, Black American pop culture, intergenerational Baptist teachings, and Shonen anime. Traditionally used for healing and harm, these figures are crafted as aspirational visions of the world, channeling protection, joy, and connection to their subjects.
I use them to confront a tension within Southern Black American communities: the essential work of safeguarding Blackness can sometimes constrain it by rejecting expressions that deviate from a singular, trauma-centered narrative. By framing the effigy as a site of possibility, I activate its healing potential to affirm the multiplicity of Black identity and speculate on futures where seemingly conflicting pathways for Black American expression nourish one another.
The figures begin as sewn canvas silhouettes, filled with cotton, painted, and then “gifted” clothing and jewelry that retain trace amounts of lived Southern experience. Frayed socks, church earrings, graduation cords—through spiritual transference, these charged objects strengthen the resonance linking the individual to the living collective. The effigies collectively foretell an optimistic Black future that is not a plea, but a legacy owed; here, these objects serve as blueprints for our claiming.
The 2026 MFA Exhibition Online, titled Residue, showcases students from all visual art disciplines, and highlights the ways our experiences shape us and continue to influence the present.
The exhibition is open to M.F.A. and M.A. students and is juried by M.F.A. students in a peer-to-peer review. This year, 998 submissions were received from more than 60% of M.F.A. programs and 24 international universities with an acceptance rate of approximately 4%.
