studio practice
design practice

Kiana Thayer (b. 1996, Providence, RI) is interested in you, in us, in our material and immaterial human experience. Using human-made images, iconography, and design thinking Thayer examines both the contradictory, and kismet happenings that present themselves within the cosmic, human, and natural world. Working with plural realities and relational meaning making their practice teeters on the edge of fiction and truth, examining the external and internal worlds we have, aspire to have, and refuse.

Over the last handful of years Thayer has been pulled to academic collage as a way of building narrative through proximity, sequencing, and repetition. Their practice utilizes an-archiving a method which encourages the re-imagination or decontextualization of an image. Putting it back into circulation with a shift in perspective or intention. 



Photographs are portals into other worlds, and they are everywhere: in magazines, on the internet, in books, on white walls. The image is a point of hallucination, a dream you can jump into, a place that is neither here nor there, an open field of possibilities. It is a practice of expanding your perspectives and suspending disbelief. 


education
2026 Cranbrook Academy of Art, Master of Fine Arts in 2D
2020 Maine College of Art & Design, Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design

fellowships & residencies
2026 Ox-Bow School of Art, Summer Fellowship, Saugatuck, MI
2025 Hub Feenix Artist Residency, Meltola, Finland
2023 DesignInquiry, Around Work, Vinalhaven, ME
2022 DesignInquiry, Bewilder, High Meadow at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water, PA

exhibitions (select)
2026
Wide Open Paris, Wide Open, Paris, FR
Reduced Field, Sojourner Gallery, New York, NY
Graduate Degree Exhibition, Cranbrook Museum of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI
Dinning Alone, Forum Gallery, MI
2025
Everyday People, Talking Dolls, Detroit, MI
Soft Return, Hard Return Gallery, Chicago, IL
Singular Disruption, Pop-up, Chicago, IL
2024
Selling to the Smiths, Frank Llyod Wright’s Smith House, Bloomfield Hills, MI
Collect, Insitute of Contemporary Art, Portland, ME
2023
Rolling Coal, ****solo****, 82 PARRIS Gallery, Portland, ME
House Warming, 82 PARRIS Gallery, Portland, ME
ARTPM, BOUY Gallery, Kittery, ME
The Last Spin, New Systems Exhibition, Portland, ME
2020
SPLAY, Able Baker Contemporary, Portland, ME
[ON] Now, Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland, ME
Send Nudes, Moisturizer Gallery, Gainsfield, FL
Art of Protest, Engine Gallery, Biddeford, ME

publications I designed (select)
Fountainswimming, vol. 5: It’s Alive!, Cranbrook Academy of Art Literary Magazine
the water’s not getting any warmer, Artist Catalog
Chiedza Pasipanodya, Artist Catalog
Sophia Larsen, Artist Catalog 
Arnold J. Kemp: To Whom Keeps a Record, Exhibition Catalog, Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland, ME
The Last Season On Earth, Exhibition Catalog, Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland, ME
Working Waterfronts, The First Coast, The Island Institute, Camden, ME
Poetics of Process, Exhibition Catalog, Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland, ME

collections
2026
Library Archives, Cranbrook Academy of Art 
2025
Cranbrook Center for Collections, Cranbrook Art Museum
2024
Joanne Waxman Library Rare Books Room, Maine College of Art & Design
Bryn Mawr College Special Collections, Bryn Mawr College
2017
Raymond H. Fogler Library Archives, University of Maine, Orono, ME 

awards & recognition
2026
Cranbrook Museum of Art Purchase Prize Finalist, Cranbrook Museum of Art, MI
2024
American Graphic Design Award, Graphic Design USA
2019
Best in Show, Merit Competition Exhibition, Maine College of Art
Broderson Student Award Maine Ad & Design

projects
2025
third place prize, Architecture Competition
2024
Flate Space, Curatorial Project



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