Alfred University MFA graduate earns prestigious art award

Han, who earned an MFA through Alfred University’s Expanded Media, Integrated Electronic Arts (IEA) program, was one of just 66 individual artists presented a 2023 Creative Capital “Wild Futures: Art, Culture, Impact” Award. The awards, which each come with funding up to $50,000, were presented in the categories of Technology, Performing Arts, and Literature, as well as Multidisciplinary and Socially Engaged art forms.

A two-time IEA resident artist at Alfred University, Han was born in South Korea and is a Brooklyn, NY-based interdisciplinary artist working in video, performance, text, and code. She also serves as an associate professor at CUNY-College at Staten Island, where she teaches Design and Digital Media.

Han awarded a Creative Capital Award in the Technology category. According to the Creative Capital website, the awards “fund the creation of experimental, risk-taking projects that push boundaries formally and thematically, venturing into wild, out-there, never-before-seen concepts, and future universes real or imagined.” 

Han’s project, “Terre de Tendre,” is described as “an immersive world-exploration video game loosely based on Carte du Tendre—a map of an imagined land created by a group of women in 17th-century France that charts the path toward true love. Mixing the fantastical with real-world elements, the game uses themes of interdependency, memory, empathy, and care among humans and nonhuman agents to approach and reframe contemporary questions concerning the ongoing migration crisis.”