BFA+MFA 2021 online exhibition

Connect with Qatar’s new generation of artists and designers.

From May through August 2021, Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar (VCUarts Qatar) will be hosting an online exhibition that will showcase of the very best of emerging art and design talent by the graduating students from its Fashion Design, Graphic Design, Interior Design, MFA in Design, and Painting + Printmaking programs. 

Titled, BFA + MFA 2021, the online exhibition will include outstanding and imaginative works on a fascinating and engaging range of subjects including, gender stereotyping, cultural conservation in Qatar, third culture kids, mental well-being, nationality and identity, social hierarchies, design for the ageing, and homelessness. 

BFA + MFA 2021 will launch on May 10 at this link. 

The exhibition is an opportunity for industry professionals, prospective students and their parents, and the general public to connect with an exciting new generation of artists and designers who are emerging fromthe shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic with new ideas and in-demand skills that were honed both by their experiences before and during the lockdown, and from their collaborations with the tier one design professionals, artists, and academics that are an integral part of the unique educational experience at VCUarts Qatar. 

Rab McClure, the Director the MFA in Design program at VCUarts Qatar praised the incredible skills of the graduates. “We are inspired by their pluck and courage in the face of adversity,” he said, “but the fact is, design is never easy, and designers are trained to plan ahead and be resilient. These students were already resourceful and hardworking before everything shut down. What their success reflects is not so much isolated cleverness and serendipity, but the benefits of creative thinking and ingrained habits.”

“Our first BFA + MFA online show, last year, allowed industry and media professionals to view and appreciate the talent and creativity at VCUarts Qatar,” said Amir Berbić, the Dean of VCUarts Qatar. “This year, we’re continuing the same, with projects that show, despite the circumstances, how our students have, again, sought to venture off the beaten track to explore issues that affect humanity across the globe, as much as those that offer a quirky, lighter twist on the ordinary and the everyday.”

Despite the lockdown, VCUarts Qatar ensured that the students had access to all the resources that would allow them to incorporate techniques from animation, textile design, silk printing, and fabrication technology, through visual languages, product, print and website design, typography, home fashion merchandising, and building code requirements, to interior graphics, printmaking, digital painting, screen-printing, lithography, computer programming, and photographic stencil techniques, in their final projects.

VCUarts Qatar, which is a Qatar Foundation partner university, is part of an emerging art and design hub in the Arabian gulf state that includes Doha Design District, M7, Msheireb Design District, Qatar Museums, Katara Art Center, and many other art and design incubators and exhibition spaces. 

The Class of 2021 follows in the footsteps of alumni who are making their mark in the four corners of the globe. Some of them have been recognized through international awards—such as the International Property Awards, and the Red Dot Award—while others have had their work displayed at prestigious exhibitions and events in places such as Doha, Dubai, London, Berlin, Moscow, Paris, and Hong Kong.