Sophia Chai | Minneapolis College of Art and Design

Sophia Chai

MFA mentor

She/Her/Hers
sophiachai.com
camera.sophia@gmail.com
Drawing/Painting, Interdisciplinary, Photography, Sculpture/Installation
In-person, Online, Hybrid mentor

BIO

Sophia Chai is a Korean-American artist whose work pushes the limits of photography by tracing its origins as a natural phenomenon of light and space while simultaneously pushing it forward into its most elusive, hard-to-read forms. Recent work revisits her childhood experience of learning to read Hangul, the Korean phonetic alphabet, and enacts three key ideas of language, optics, and photography.

Chai’s work has been exhibited at Light Work (Syracuse, NY), Hair+Nails Gallery (Minneapolis and New York City), Luhring Augustine (New York, NY), 106 Green (Brooklyn, NY), and Knockdown Center (Brooklyn, NY). She has received grants and residencies from the McKnight Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Minnesota State Arts Board, Bronx Museum’s Artist in the Marketplace program, and The First Ten, which supports mid-career artist mothers. Chai earned a BA in chemistry from the University of Chicago and an MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is based in Rochester, MN.

TEACHING PHILOSOPHY & MENTORSHIP

As a teacher and a mentor, I am fully invested in facilitating safe, open spaces that nurture freedom of thought, curiosity, intellect, and fearlessness. I believe that a good mentorship can provide invaluable resources and support to a young artist who is embarking on a path of self-discovery. As an art practitioner, I am committed to cultivating good habits that serve as a foundation for being fully engaged with the daily studio practice. I believe that such a foundation can be pivotal for the life-long process of making work outside of art school.

Address

2501 Stevens Avenue
Minneapolis, MN 55404

Contact Us

612.874.3700
800.874.MCAD (6223)
Fax: 612.874.3701

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Land Acknowledgement

The Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) acknowledges it is located on traditional, ancestral, and contemporary lands of Indigenous people. This is the ancestral homeland of the Dakota and Ojibwe people, who were forcibly exiled from the land because of aggressive and persistent settler colonialism. We recognize that this place has a complex and layered history. As a community dedicated to creativity, MCAD is committed to ongoing efforts to support and advocate for American Indian Nations and peoples.


Nondiscrimination Policy

MCAD admits students of any race, color, creed, religion, ancestry, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, or marital status to all the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, creed, religion, ancestry, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, or marital status in the administration of its educational policies, scholarship and loan programs, and other school-administered programs.