Fine Arts - Work.Master Contemporary Artistic Practices

2025-2026 ADMISSIONS

The Work.Master programme – part of HEAD Genève’s Visual Arts Department – is a two-year MFA programme devoted to multi-disciplinary, studio-based, contemporary artistic practices.

As an incessantly evolving programme, Work.Master dares to take risks and proposes diverse formats which encourage experiment, exchange, and sharing, in order to challenge and develop the participants’ practice over the course of two years. As well as to reflect on the changing conditions of the arts with an increasing emphasis on diversity, post- and de-colonial discourses, climate change and rapidly changing technologies.

In the academic year 2023/24 Work.Master focuses on three topical themes: Decolonising Identities, Cybercultures, and Ecological Emergencies. Within each of those the participants are at liberty to choose from an offer of practice-oriented and research-oriented courses: Lab.Zones and Think.Zones, as well as pursue work on their diploma project through critical sessions and juries.

Key aspects of the Work.Master programme include:

1. Lab.Zones – Laboratory-like workshops in which participants work with artists – frequently in collaboration with local and international institutions, independent spaces – in a range of formats that include critical sessions, publications and print editions, three-dimensional works, performances, and community events.

2. Think.Zones – Theory can be a form of practice that also allows for investigating and challenging one’s position. By engaging artists and professionals from different backgrounds the participants to Work.Master are invited to consider what it means to be human with regards to technology, environment, image and identity production.

3. Critical Sessions – Regular sessions in which participants present their work for discussion with tutors and fellow students.

4. Diploma Preparation – Work towards the diploma project consists of individual sessions under direct supervision of selected tutors and is accompanied by larger meetings focusing on developing selected tools important for the development of the participants’ practice. Those are followed by jury meetings with invited guests at the end of the first year and conclude with diploma juries at the end of the second year.

Teaching languages: French and English. See all language requirements.

The Work.Master specialization of the Master in Fine Arts is taught in French and English.
Candidates whose high school diploma or Bachelor's degree has not been issued by a French- or English-speaking institution must, after admission, submit by 30 June:

  • a B2-level French or English language certificate, based on the global scale of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. This certificate must be produced by a language school or other recognized institution.
  • or, a TOEFL test taken no earlier than 1 July 2022, with a minimum score of 92
  • or, an IELTS test taken no earlier than 1 July 2022, with a minimum score of 7.0

If applicants fail to submit one of the above-mentioned certificates of French or English language proficiency by 30 June, the admission offer lapses immediately.
Candidates who hold an upper-secondary level qualification from a German- speaking Swiss canton or Ticino that includes French as a subject are exempt from the requirement to provide this language certificate.


Access the Fine Arts Department schedule of events
Go to the Work.Master website

HEADS OF MA WORK.MASTER
Roxane Bovet
Laure Marville

ASSISTANT
Fig Docher
Niels Hung

TEACHING STAFF
Magdalena Gerber
Fabrice Gygi
Christophe Kihm
Charlotte Laubard
Christelle Lheureux
Clovis Maillet
Laure Marville
Ileana Parvu
Lili Reynaud Dewar
David Zerbib
 

Invited speakers

Mabe Bethônico, Jay Jordan, Rosa Menkman, Adeena Mey, Mai-Thu Perret