2026 MFA Thesis Exhibition

Mil Fienco (she/they) is an Ecuadorian-American multidisciplinary artist whose work focuses on the perception of the body and how perception shifts our relationship to identity and each other. With fabric being contorted and bodies being illustrated, bodies moving amongst video montages, Fienco asks the question: How does the queer brown body exist between cultural expectation and body politics? Sewing body parts together made of fabric, with illustrative qualities, Fienco creates landscapes with the figure, between the lines and curves, questioning the audience’s own relationship to judgement and to cognizance of others. The material becomes the skin, there is intimacy created between how the figure is now in relation to the combination of fabric, the connected nature of queerness and how touch becomes integral to understanding our own body in relation to environment. There is an aspect in which Fienco calls upon the audience to slow down with them, to be able to be comfortable in the unattainable nature of softness. Dysphoria and euphoria dance between the figure’s genders and sexuality that are depicted by Fienco, calling into question how they perceive themselves. Born and raised in Miami, Florida, Fienco presents these central themes through a constellation of vibrant colors and textures, creating an elucidating portrait of eroticism and skin through the Lesbian, brown body as one born  in the tropics can imagine.