Date of Award
Spring 5-14-2026
Author's Department
Graduate School of Art
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Visual Art
Degree Type
Thesis
Abstract
My thesis examines looking as a sacred and relational practice rooted in familial memory, storytelling, and the photographic archive. Drawing from early experiences of engaging family photographs alongside my mother and great-grandmother, I conceptualize these encounters as the formation of “temporal altars”: living vessels that activate space, memory, and multiplicity. These intimate acts of looking and listening position the home as a critical site where Black subjectivity is held with care and complexity.
By casting these modes of perception into domestic spaces, my thesis not only resists reductive external gazes but interrogates the archive as a colonial apparatus structured by logics of violence, ownership, and othering. I examine alternative archival methodologies that privilege visual multiplicity, opacity, and relationality. Through iterative, practice-based approaches, I reimagine the archive as a living system that enables me to layer histories and embodied memories that emerge beyond fixed or singular narratives. Ultimately, my work positions the act of looking as both a critical and generative method for reconfiguring how memory, identity, and care are produced and sustained.
Language
English
Program Chair
Tiffany Calvert
Thesis Text Advisor
Chris Dingwall
Thesis Text Advisor
Meghan Kirkwood
Faculty Mentor
Joe DeVera
Committee Member
Lisa Bulawsky
Committee Member
Jose Garza
Recommended Citation
Mosby, Brittni, "Temporal Ubiquity" (2026). MFA in Visual Art. 44.
https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/mfa_visual_art/44
Included in
African American Studies Commons, Art and Design Commons, Art Practice Commons, Contemporary Art Commons, Ethnic Studies Commons, Fine Arts Commons, Reading and Language Commons, Theory and Criticism Commons, Visual Studies Commons
Artist's Statement
My practice considers memory as an active, generative site, where histories are not preserved unchanged but permitted to evolve through iterative and material gestures. This process creates a living archive, one that builds, and renews with each engagement. These inherited stories, gestures, and materials, once held in private space, are re-situated within broader public and conceptual landscapes. In this act of expansion, the archive becomes porous, fluid, and participatory. It resists finality and embraces evolution.
These materials, imbued with personal and ancestral significance, serve as both the foundation and the mirror through which I examine the interplay of memory through resilience. Drawing from early experiences of engaging in family photographs with my mother & grandfather. I conceptualize these encounters as the formation of “temporal altars” as living vessels that activate space, memory, and multiplicity. These intimate acts of looking and listening position the home as a critical site where Black subjectivity is held with care and complexity.