LUCID DREAMS | RISD PHOTOGRAPHY MFA ‘25

Opening reception: Thursday, August 21st, 6–8PM

Thursday, August 21st – Friday, September 5th, 2025
Monday – Friday, 11–6pm

New York, NY – Penumbra Foundation is pleased to host Lucid Dreams, a group exhibition by the Rhode Island School of Design MFA Photography Class of 2025: Ella Baum, Mengru Du, Zhu Gaocanye, Katelynn M. Rogers, Tam Stockton, and Yuchen Wang. Curated by Ella Baum.

Six photographers present stories of devotion, fervor, grief and the relentless pursuit of knowledge. Encompassing a wide variety of techniques and methodologies — including analog and digital photography, collage, video, installation and bookmaking — this exhibition is a testament to the broad spectrum of the photographic medium. In their images, Ella Baum, Mengru Du, Katelynn M. Rogers and Yuchen Wang engage with illusive landscapes of loss and developing relationships to self, family, and belonging, while Tam Stockton and Zhu Gaocanyue’s photographs explore constructed realities, the belief systems that anchor us within community and humanity’s eternal quest for meaning.

For artists everything is material. Even the most ephemeral sensations, thoughts, and emotions become fodder for the ineffable act of creation. The photographers in this exhibition immerse themselves within the slippery realm of the imagination and make real that which might otherwise have only been a dream.

All six graduates have completed a monograph and a portfolio of prints that are now part of the RISD Museum archive and the RISD Photo Department library.

The gallery hours for this exhibition are Monday through Friday, 11 AM — 6 PM.
Admission is free.

About the artists:

Ella Baum is a photographer, writer and educator. She received her Masters of Fine Arts in photography from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2025 and her Bachelor's degree in English Literature from Vassar College in 2020. She has been a teacher and assistant teacher at Brown University, RISD, the International Center of Photography, ICP at The Point and the Penumbra Foundation. Ella's written work has been featured in Zingara Poetry Review, "Somebody Else’s Poetry" May 2019, and Aspire Design & Home magazine. She has curated and exhibited photographic work at Candela Books + Gallery, BAU Gallery, the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Sol Koffler Gallery, Red Eye Gallery and Woods-Gerry Gallery. Ella is a native New Yorker, and a dual citizen of the U.S. and Sweden.
ellabaum.com

Mengru Du, born and raised in China, is an interdisciplinary artist working across photography, video, and performance. Drawing from personal experience and her Chinese cultural background, she investigates the complexities of maternal relationships, the lingering effects of childhood trauma, and the intergenerational bonds reflected in humans and their pets. Du’s practice often weaves together intimate storytelling and symbolic imagery, creating spaces where vulnerability, memory, and empathy intersect.
@du_mengdru

朱高灿月 Zhu Gaocanyue is a multidisciplinary artist and educator whose practice spans photography, printmaking, installation, artist books, etc. Their recent research explores shifting definitions of value and investigates how humans relate to non-functional objects, obsolete knowledge systems, and marginalized forms of labor. Zhu Gao received an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2025 and has been awarded upcoming full fellowships at the Vermont Studio Center and The Studios at MASS MoCA. In 2024, Zhu Gao co-founded zug press with Zuya Yang—an independent publishing house dedicated to experimental approaches to fine art bookmaking.
zhugaocanyue.com

Katelynn M. Rogers was born and raised in Northeast Ohio. Her photographs explore the crossroads of maternal loss, generational trauma, and environmental decay. Inspired by mythologies of oral storytelling and the study of dreams, Rogers' work questions the ways violence remains in both the collective unconscious and the landscape, long after its initial impact.
acinematicdisaster.com

Tam Stockton, born 1997 in Berkeley, CA, is an artist working with Photography. He received a Master in Fine Arts from The Rhode Island School of Design in 2025 and a Bachelor in Fine Arts from Bard College in 2019 where he studied photography and worked assisting Barbara Ess. Stockton’s work is often made in pursuit of the uncanny, using both physical and digital manipulation to invoke questions of tangibility and photographic representation. His work has been exhibited in several prestigious venues
along the East Coast and included on several occasions in The New York Times. Currently, Stockton is living in Providence Rhode Island.
tamstockton.cargo.site

Yuchen Wang is a Chinese lens-based artist whose work explores unspoken emotional tensions within familial and social structures. Working across photography, installation, and time-based media, he investigates how images can embody non-verbal experiences rooted in memory, loss, and unresolved emotional legacies. Influenced by East Asian patriarchy and contemporary philosophy, Wang often focuses on the father-son relationship as a symbolic site of repression and identity struggle. His recent work documents travels with his father as a way to physically and emotionally reapproach their long-estranged bond. After learning of his father's illness, Wang's images transformed into meditations on mortality, grief, and resistance—using visual silence as a form of elegy and self-reflection.
jackwangyuchen.com