2025 Annual Report

In the foreground, a sculptural apparatus comprises two cameras on the ends‬ ‭ of a single rotating arm, each pointed inwards at a central mirrored sphere. A feed from‬ ‭ the cameras are routed to a nearby monitor. In the background, other video monitors‬ ‭ are visible, including a grid of nine showing the same abstract black-and-white pattern,‬ ‭along with exhibition wall text.‬ ‭

Exhibition view: Steina: Playback, MIT List Visual Arts Center, 2024. Photo: Dario Lasagni

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List Projects 30: Jeremy Couillard

July 18–October 6, 2024

"In the game the main character wakes up from a dream only to realise that he’s trapped in the same dreamscape – on an island colonised by the Lavender Corporation and filled with depressed, abused residents; and the freedom one gets in exploring the city only heightens its claustrophobia and the lack of a way out."

– Yuwen Jiang for ArtReview

A dark gallery space with black walls is illuminated by a large screen. Digitally‬ ‭ rendered footage of a dark city street is projected onto the large screen in the right‬ ‭ corner of the room. A park bench is placed on the left side of the image facing the‬ ‭ screen. In the background, three square paintings depicting bright, geometric forms‬ ‭ hang in a row. Astroturf lines the walls of the room with painted wooden plants emerging‬ ‭ from it.‬ ‭

Student Lending Art Program

August 27–September 15, 2024

"The piece Chandra had selected was “Mrs. Webster and Her Hummingbirds,” a 1936 photograph by former MIT professor Harold Eugene Edgerton shot at 1/100,000th of a second, so fast that it clearly captured the hummingbirds’ wings. Chandra picked it because he was amazed by its history. But it ultimately came to mean more to him, he said, as a metaphor for his experience in graduate school, which he described as being centered in chaos."

– Jeffrey Kelly for The Boston Globe

Installation view with framed artworks hanging on the walls salon style and four people standing looking at the art on the walls throughout the room.

Steina: Playback

October 26, 2024–January 12, 2025

“ ‘Borealis’, like many other works by Steina, utilizes video technology’s perception-altering possibilities to induce vertigo, confusion, and disorientation—and a new way of seeing the world altogether.”

– Alex Greenberger for Artnews

In the foreground, a sculptural apparatus comprises two cameras on the ends‬ ‭ of a single rotating arm, each pointed inwards at a central mirrored sphere. A feed from‬ ‭ the cameras are routed to a nearby monitor. In the background, other video monitors‬ ‭ are visible, including a grid of nine showing the same abstract black-and-white pattern,‬ ‭along with exhibition wall text.‬ ‭

List Projects 31: Kite

January 30–May 18, 2025

“The body, the score, and the installation, when they come together in time, will relive the dreams that provided its structure, an afterlife recorded—and transmitted—in graphic Lakȟóta form, serving as a script for future performances, at once legible and not, to frustrate the hungriest of gazes.”

– Christopher T. Green for ArtForum

A dark gallery space features a large screen displaying a six-sided star at its‬ ‭ center. Within the star, video footage of green stones is projected. Surrounding the‬ ‭ star, six inward-facing triangles form a pattern, while geometric shapes swirl in the‬ ‭ background alongside footage of stars and the night sky. In front of the screen, a‬ ‭formation of stones rests on the reflective black floor.‬ ‭

Pedro Gómez-Egaña: The Great Learning

February 21–July 27, 2025

“‘The Great Learning’ probes the temporal architecture of daily life, with the artist drawing on his background in music composition, sculpture, installation and performance. The breadth of his interests is matched only by the size of his library, but familiarity with the texts he cites is not essential for visitors. As one exclaimed upon exiting the show: ‘In each room I was transformed, without even having to think about it.’ It’s the experience – engaged, constructive – as much as the content of reading and listening that is Gómez-Egaña’s focus.”

– Helen Miller for Frieze
 

A copper poll suspended on an angle in the middle of a completely red painted walled room with red carpeting. Behind there are a series of weights on strings above a metal plate. A wooden cabinet tilted on a angle is visible against the wall to the left of the frame. A woman in all black sits on rectangular block at the edge of the room to the right side of the frame.

List Projects 32: Elif Saydam

June 5–August 31, 2025

"Like a graffiti tagger, Saydam encrusts images of urban spaces with flowers, filigree, and other decorative elements. These ornamentations transform a city’s quotidian sites into spaces of fantasy, while also evoking the histories of minor painting traditions such as Persian miniatures and illuminated manuscripts."

– Elizabeth Wiet for IMPULSE Magazine

A gallery entryway with scaffolding on the right and the back of a blue patchwork-style painting in view. In the background, a painting hangs on an orange wall adorned with gold spray-painted motifs.

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