2026 MFA Thesis Exhibition

"as I let go of what to me was the world"*
(*From Clarice Lispector’s The Passion According to G.H.) Food Waste Compost (Apple Cores, Arugula, Avocado Skin, Banana Peels, Cardboard, Cassava Starch Bioplastic, Compostable Bags, Drink Holders, Flower Petals, Flower Stems, Former Algae-Bioplastic Experiments, Former Peach Tongue Tattoo Poems, Found Branches, Ginger Skin, Napkins, Orange Peels, Oyster Mushrooms, Paper Towels, Parsley Stems, Pine Needles From Home, Pistachio Shells, Woodchips, ongoing), Compost Bio-Composite (Sifted Compost, Agar Agar Binder), Red Wigglers, Acrylic Tubes, Stainless Steel Tubes, Stainless Steel Bolts, Cold Rolled Steel Sheet, Steel Rod and Flat Stock, Matte Medium, Silicone Plugs
8 x 4 x 8 ft
2026

“I (give) myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love”
No added formaldehyde oriented strand board, compost, landfill compressed waste, steel rods
*from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass
84x28x48 in
2026

Mckenna Goade traces moments when containment fails—when what is meant to be preserved, numbered, and named seeps through prescribed borders. She is drawn to sites of excess and refusal: landfills, compost sites, hospitals, burial plots, and archives—spaces where materials and bodies are sorted, stabilized, and declared useful or expendable. These systems promise order, yet inevitably produce leakage, residue, and intimacy.
Their installations often appear as makeshift systems of care, assembled from things once thrown “away”: stainless steel pipes, food, plastic waste, and compressed refuse. These structures attempt to cradle deteriorating materials (algae bioplastics, compost-concrete, plasticized sediment), echoing the logics of waste-management infrastructures. The resulting assemblages mirror filtration units, containment boxes, or medical apparatuses that hold objects that resist interpretation.
Goade’s impulse to create these systems stems from a deep longing to be “without border”—a longing shaped by the desire to remain connected to her late father, beyond death. She questions how to be with what leaks—how to sit with the chemical, the bodily, the archival, as they mingle, stack, and blur. She points toward the slow collapse of boundaries, recognizing that even in our best attempts at separation, we are always-already touching, already merged through intra-
action.

Mckenna Goade is an artist and researcher working at the crossroads of sculpture, ecology, and material transformation. Goade graduated in 2024 as the Valedictorian of the School of the Arts at Utah Valley University (Orem, UT) with a BFA in Painting and Drawing, and she is currently pursuing an MFA in Fine Arts at The New School (New York, NY). Goade was a recipient of the Parsons School of Design Scholarship at The New School for 2024–26. She has exhibited in both solo and group shows at Odd Duck Studio, Lakemount Museum of Art, and 25 East Gallery.