Second-Year Students
(b. 1991, Jerusalem) lives and works between Tel Aviv, Israel, and Richmond, VA. Through sculpture, painting, and installation, Shach synthesizes and transforms various elements, exploring the internal tension that exists between them — between the material and the visionary. His work emphasizes how seemingly non-events, when treated with sensitivity, can reveal a fantastic potential. Shach's works are characterized by ambiguity and are saturated with reflections and transparencies, allowing images and materials to merge into one another. In the absence of a central protagonist, he seeks to imbue objects and metaphors with agency, grace, and at times, even religious significance. The viewer's initial point of contact with the work is often through its bodily proportions and the tactile experience it evokes. Through intense polishing, ambiguous functionality, and the use of unconventional materials, Shach aims to provoke a physical response, tempting the viewer into touching the piece.
Sara Willa is a sculptor and choreographer. Working with found objects, biomaterials, and performance practices, she explores embodiment, affect, material politics, and their entanglements. She has been supported by residencies at La Caldera (Barcelona), PLUTO (Valencia, Spain), Théâtre de Vanves (Paris), Centro Huarte (Pamplona), and The Liminal Gallery (Valencia), among others, and was a participant in the 2025 edition of the Postnatural Independent Program at the Institute for Postnatural Studies (Madrid). She graduated with honors in Studio Art and Dance at Pomona College (CA) and completed significant coursework in Contemporary Dance Performance and Choreography at the Valencia Superior Dance Conservatory prior to pursuing her MFA in Sculpture and Extended Media at VCU. She is a cofounder of Matteria transdisciplinary dance collective, where she contributed towards collective performances and choreography pedagogical research between 2019 and 2023.
Hannah Berger works in sculpture and writing to call attention to the tenuous boundaries between the real and fictional, authentic and replica. Their work is interested in denaturalizing the construction of individual and collective subjectivity as it intersects with commodification, alienation, and extraction.
Diabou (b. Senegal) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice expands on her interests in hidden bureaucracies within the household, She fabricates domestic forms that defy their original utility, amplifying her material response to inherited structures. Diabou holds a BFA in Art and Design from Alfred University. Recent exhibitions include Made in VA Biennial 2026, Virginia MoCA, El Deporte Más bello del mundo, Black Brick Project, NY and Every Woman Biennial 2026, Pen and Brush Gallery, NY. She was honorably mentioned by the International Sculpture Center for the 2025 Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award. She recently completed a Residency at Cité International des Arts in Paris, France.
First-Year Students
Andrew Obernesser's work examines how images amass into an object, and how an object can mutates into a thousands images. He uses emerging technologies found in geospatial systems, industrial farming applications, and biotechnology to produce sculptural works that investigate how materialization permits time travel between the figure and ground of context and artifact. Obernesser received his B.A. from Colorado College and more recently studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in London.
Nadia Nazar (b. Baltimore) collaborates with steel, stop-motion, and sound in order to understand her matrilineal relationships, history, and the fight for liberation. Her work delves into her relationship with the residual impact of colonization, including the physical and systemic structures that have exploited both the land and (her) people. Nadia received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Interdisciplinary Sculpture and Animation. She was a year-long metal resident and Teaching Artist at The Steel Yard in Providence, Rhode Island from 2025 to 2026. Her work has been exhibited at the Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art, the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum, Area 405, Waterfire Arts Center, and Spare Room Gallery.
Maya McCollum is an interdisciplinary artist whose work examines interactions between technology and the natural world through sonic and material processes, utilizing traditional craft techniques, such as weaving and basketry, alongside DIY electronics. Her installation and performance practice often begins with collecting: the sounds, images, or found objects within these collections act as methods of mapping, remembering, and storytelling. As an improviser and sound artist, Maya works from her background as a violinist and her interest in free improvisation, embodied listening, and field recording. Maya has attended residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, I-Park, Iowa Lakeside Lab, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, Binaural Nodar, the Icelandic Textile Center, and more. Maya has a BA in Studio Art and a BM in Music Technology from Oberlin College and Conservatory. In 2024-25, Maya was awarded the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship for her research, Weaving Sound: Interdisciplinary Art in the Evolving Landscape.
Minhoon Kim (b. 1997) is a sculptor based in Seoul and Richmond. Kim examines how systems of value and order clash and intertwine, tracing what is placed at the center of a hierarchy and what is pushed to its margins, and translates these tensions into sculptural form. His work is shaped by years spent as a repairer, an experience that grounds his practice in hands-on labor and an ethics of care. Rather than repeating the upright stance shaped by heteronormativity, his sculptures experiment with the possibility of standing together in solidarity, revisiting undervalued materials and marginalized narratives to propose alternative forms of "verticality." His work has been presented in various exhibitions in Korea and internationally, including Frieze House Seoul, La Nuvola, Art Sonje Center, and xlarge. He has also organized numerous exhibitions as a curator and co-founder of artist collectives in South Korea.
Finn Dugan (b. 2000, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) is an artist exploring ideological and material residues of technology through processes of accumulation, erosion, and repair. Recent exhibitions include Romance (Pittsburgh, PA), Tomayko Foundation (Pittsburgh, PA) Plexus Projects (Brooklyn, NY), Mid-America College Artists Association, and Sculpture X. He has been awarded residencies at Bunker Projects (Pittsburgh, PA), ChaNorth (Pine Plains, NY), Popps Packing (Detroit, MI), and Brew House Arts (Pittsburgh, PA). He is currently pursuing his MFA in Sculpture and Extended Media at Virginia Commonwealth University.