ON VIEW
May 7 – 16, 2026

OPENING RECEPTION
Thursday, May 7, 5 – 7 pm

Harley Ngai Grieco

harleygrieco.com
@helloharl

Harley Ngai Grieco (b. State College, PA) is a lens-based artist with an interdisciplinary practice combining photography, drawing, and sculpture. She is an educator specializing in analog and alternative photography practices. Harley earned a BFA from The Cooper Union School of Art in 2013 and an MFA from the Maine College of Art & Design in 2026. Her work has been exhibited at The Bard Graduate Center, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, En Foco Inc., The Griffin Museum of Photography, The Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art, The Tides Institute & Museum of Art, and The Rankin Arts Photography Center. She has been published through Artefuse, Manifest Press, and Tussle Projects. Harley presented at The Art of Experimentation International Online Conference hosted by Women Alternative Photography Group & Folk House Darkroom in 2025. She has served as a photography technician and adjunct instructor at The Cooper Union School of Art since 2017 and is based in Brooklyn, NY.

I am a lens-based artist with an interdisciplinary practice combining photography, drawing, and sculpture. Using analog film processes and sculptural techniques, I examine how images and surfaces shape perception. My practice spans digital and analogue photographic prints, collaged sculptural forms, and architecturally sensitive installations. I propose a dual function of the image, where photographic depth and sculptural surface engage visual and haptic perceptual systems. My work investigates the material and conceptual connections between decorative arts, landscape photography, and architectural theory.

As a Chinese American artist, I explore histories of eastern landscape and archaeology to question the afterlife of photographic and familial memory. My most recent work explores the historical and technical structures of traditional Chinese architecture in tandem with re-printing photographs of my family’s ancestral home in Taishan, China. I am interested in comparing the western and eastern concepts of archaeological ruins, where eastern architecture is rooted in a state of re-building replicas. Through alternative photographic printing methods and sculptural installation, I am making new architectural approaches to my family photographs.

The MFA Thesis Exhibition for the Class of 2026 incorporates a range of making practices spanning themes including the natural and built environments, the uncanny, the everyday, health, grief, and personal and cultural histories. With an emphasis on both the personal and the global, these nine artists make a variety of contributions through ceramics, drawings, photography, prints, sculptures, and sound and video installations. The nature of their work and research demonstrates the caliber and cultural relevance of MECA&D’s MFA Studio Art program.








Institute of Contemporary Art
at Maine College of Art & Design
522 Congress St. Portland, ME 04101

Gallery Hours:
Wed–Sun, 11:00am–5:00pm,
Thursday, 11:00am–7:00pm