2025 MFA Thesis Exhibition

My fine art practice explores the depiction of both internal and external landscapes. I am interested in the specificity of place and experience, transcending the literal to convey the feeling, atmosphere, and sensations associated with a given location. Environmental decay, erosion, and pollution are key themes that permeate my explorations, with concern for the climate crisis and its direct impact on the landscapes I aim to represent. All my artmaking begins with close examination, documentation, and research, letting everyday nuances unravel themselves through keen observation and honing in on essential patterns, conventions, and characteristics. I aim to create immersive, experiential artwork that enables audiences to share a first-hand experience, engaging and empathizing with the concerns and particularity of a given location. My interdisciplinary approach encompasses a range of media, often creating installations with elements spanning painting, photography, video, sound, writing, and sculpture. My graduate thesis focuses on the intersection of climate change and race in the Caribbean, where I was born, encompassing my research across several islands in the summer of 2024. I utilized my documentary photography, writings, and audio recordings to develop an installation probing the question ‘Does Water Carry Memory?’, examining the many ways people and places are intrinsically linked and the complex manifestations of water as both a life source and a mode of destruction.

Danielle Sargeant (b. 1998 in Kingston, Jamaica) is a British interdisciplinary artist, writer, and curator based in Devon, United Kingdom. While pursuing her MFA in Fine Arts at Parsons School of Design, she lived and worked in New York City, returning to England in May 2025. Danielle received a Parsons Merit Scholarship and Oscar Kolin MFA Fellowship for her graduate studies, focusing on developing immersive, experiential artwork across new media. Danielle was awarded the Mellon Initiative & Tishman Environment and Design Center Creative Fellowship for 2024-2025 in support of her graduate thesis project, ‘Does Water Carry Memory?’, on the intersection of climate change and race in the Caribbean. Previously, Danielle earned her BA (Hons) in History of Art with Material Studies from University College London in 2020 and her Art & Design Foundation Diploma from University of the Arts London in 2017. She was a member of the Duchamp & Sons Art Collective from 2022-2023, exhibiting at and co-curating two group shows at Whitechapel Gallery, London, during this time. Danielle is now a 25East Gallery Curatorial Committee member and independently curated her first group show in February 2025, titled ‘Common Ground.’