2026 MFA Thesis Exhibition

Cathedrals of Pleasure
Acrylic Gouache on Panel
3 panels, 8x20in cad
2026

LA MAISON DIEV (Misconstruction Site IV)
Detail shot from original installation. Charcoal on paper.

Projectile Dysfunction (Misconstruction Site II)
Steel sculptures, pins, white paint, white dress, dirt and grit.

Eternal Scaffolding (Misconstruction site I)
Paper, charcoal, masking tape, push pins, bubble wrap, packing tape, white dress, self, others.

Secretus;Secretion;Secret (Misconstruction Site III)
Steel, paper, charcoal.

Vanda Focanti is an inter-disciplinary Mexican-Italian visual artist . Harnessing a methodology of misconstruction, she uses an array of devices (installation, tarot, drawing assemblage, time travel, painting and writing) to puncture the matrixes she was born into.

World (un)making is the primary objective of Vanda’s practice.

In the body of work titled Misconstruction Sites, the artist employs large scale charcoal drawings and metal sculptures to create site specific installations, each made from the remix and repurposing of the materials used in previous “sites”, to generate uncanny and surreal landscapes. The drawn landscape interrogates familiarity and time by obfuscating architectural shapes, such as the arch/portal, and historical references from across Europe, LatAm and the USA.

The act of painting conjures a remembrance of things that never were, viewing the exercise of imagination as a political act, perhaps the simplest one. A Jungian approach to interiority compels her tireless edification of a place beyond places, rendered through whimsical color schemes and fugitive subjects. Here, imagination contends with recognition as the image appears as a lost shard of an unseen cosmos, a portal clueing us into an alternate order.

Vanda Focanti (b. 1999, Los Angeles, USA) is an Italian and Mexican-American inter (un) disciplinary artist. Her practice spans installation, sculpture, drawing, performance, writing, and set-making, mobilizing materials such as charcoal, paper, metal and fabric to construct immersive and unstable environments.

In 2022, Vanda received a BA (Hons) in Culture, Criticism and Curation from Central Saint Martins, London, before repositioning herself as an artist in New York City in 2024.

Her installations grapple with fragile epistemologies pursuing misconstruction as a methodology to investigate non-fixed truths. Traversing mediums, Vanda’s work queers symbols of authority, unsettles fixed positions, and insists on art-making as an embodied, relational, and unresolved act.

Vanda’s work has inhabited spaces in London, Milan, Rome, and most recently in New York City, where she obtained her MFA in Fine Arts at The New School and is currently based.