On Display Scattered Earth, Sounded Depth

Scattered Earth, Sounded Depth: Penn Fine Arts MFA Thesis Exhibition

The Arthur Ross Gallery is pleased to present Scattered Earth, Sounded Depth, the 2025 MFA Thesis Exhibition featuring the work of Eissa Attar and Alvin Luong. Through installation, moving image, and printmaking, Attar and Luong offer poetic reflections on landscapes and cultural histories. Their works explore geography as a site of cultural memory and migration while critically examining documentary practices and modes of display.

Eissa Attar’s practice investigates migration, belonging, and entropy through photography and moving image works. In Extract You Again, a series of sand drawings on paper layered over images of consumer products and waste, Attar reflects on cycles of consumption and erasure in Saudi Arabia’s evolving landscape.

Alvin Luong’s multichannel video installation, Corals of Bidong, connects the history of Malaysia’s Bidong Island—once a refugee camp following the Vietnam War—to its present-day use as a coral research facility and a dubious coral wildlife trade. Developed over two years of intensive research, the work offers a profound meditation on human and natural migration. Through video, sculpture, and installation, Luong examines narratives of survival and the enduring social and environmental impacts of historical events.

Curated by Emily Zimmerman, Director of Exhibitions at the Arthur Ross Gallery, this exhibition marks the debut of the MFA Thesis Exhibition at the Arthur Ross Gallery.

This exhibition was on display at the Arthur Ross Gallery May 1 – 30, 2025.