MFA in Public Action
The Master of Fine Arts in Public Action is a highly selective graduate degree program, designed to give accomplished artists working as agents of social change the time, space, and focus to conduct research and develop new work.
MFA fellows are expected to have substantial professional experience in socially or civically engaged public art or related areas, well beyond undergraduate studies. We recognize the achievements of artists who have had significant careers and encourage them to apply in order to continue their creative research.
In a supportive and challenging environment, fellows collaborate with expert faculty members and other students, including undergraduates, to deepen their artistic passions and to hone their skills. MFA in Public Action fellows have access to the College’s outstanding facilities whenever possible, in consultation with the faculty in the discipline of spaces or materials they are requesting.
Prior to applying to the MFA in Public Action and/or to receive more information, please email capa@bennington.edu
Current MFA Fellows
Farzana Wahidy
Farzana Wahidy is an award-winning Afghan documentary photographer best known for her photographs of women and girls from Afghanistan. She was the first female Afghan photographer to work with international media agencies. Wahidy has been documenting the lives of Afghan women for more than a decade, and she recently established the Afghanistan Photographers Association.
Wahidy was born in Kandahar and moved to Kabul with her family at the age of six. She attended school during the Afghan civil war, and then an underground school after the Taliban took power in 1996. After their defeat in December 2001, Wahidy completed high school and enrolled in a two-year program with AINA Photojournalism Institute. In 2004 she began working as a photographer for Agence-France Presse and later joined the Associated Press. She is a graduate in Photojournalism from Loyalist College in Canada.
Wahidy’s work has been widely published in international magazines and newspapers and she has done assignments for numerous NGOs. In 2014 she created a project to train Afghan photographers, to review copyright law, and to research the history of photography in Afghanistan.
Wahidy’s photographs have been presented in solo and group exhibitions in Afghanistan, Canada, the United States, India, Pakistan, Germany, Italy, Norway, Switzerland, China, Finland, France, and recently Portugal.
Wahidy is also a Fellow at the Academy of Exile at the University Duisburg-Essen and Folkwang University of Arts in Essen. She was a visiting faculty member at Bennington for Spring 2022 and is currently pursuing her MFA at Bennington.
