The kaleidoscopic feel of Weeda’s work reflects the many perspectives included in “Through Shifting Lenses,” an exhibit of Master of Fine Arts thesis projects by the SMFA at Tufts Class of 2025. The works were on view at the Tufts University Art Galleries on the Medford/Somerville campus through Commencement.

Perspective changes at the click of a controller in Yulia Niu’s “Virtual Reality Dreamscape.” Exhibit-goers donned VR headsets to navigate through fantastical worlds Niu built with game engine software. 

Nostalgic photos and ephemera—a Rubik’s cube, an Etch A Sketch, a Duran Duran album cover—were the background to Chris Diani’s remembrance of “the sugar-high of pop culture in the neon-hued 1980s,” as he writes in his artist statement. But it was a difficult time to grow up gay. In his installation, he paired portraits of queer men with audio recordings of their recollections of the 1980s and their lives during the HIV/AIDS epidemic. “It truly was the best of times and the worst of times,” he writes. 

One could easily get lost exploring Richard Farrell’s collection of drawings, small paintings, and musings that were tacked to the wall like the contents of an enormous bulletin board and reached clear to the ceiling. 

Taking up the full height of another wall, Foster Boyajian’s six canvases of abstract painting flowed into one another as she explored how color and scale influence physical and emotional reactions.