Emma Geiger named 2025 Cassilhaus Travel Fellow

Emma Geiger

The Cassilhaus Travel Fellowship is made possible through a partnership between Cassilhaus, an arts incubator featuring an artist residency and exhibition program, Duke's Master of Fine Arts in Experimental and Documentary Arts (MFA|EDA), and the Center for Documentary Studies (CDS) at Duke University.

It was created with the idea that travel can be transformative in the life of an emerging artist. The biennial $10,000 fellowship, funded by Cassilhaus founders Ellen Cassilly and Frank Konhaus, supports Duke University MFA|EDA graduates for an eighteen-month period in their artistic research and practice beyond the traditional educational environment. “Working so closely with the students in the Duke MFA|EDA program has been an exceptionally rich experience for us,” say Cassilly and Konhaus. “We hope that this travel fellowship can continue to help recent graduates in their artistic explorations.”

The recipient of the 2025 Cassilhaus Travel Fellowship is Emma Geiger (MFA|EDA Class of 2022), who will be traveling to Iceland to explore the convergence of the past and the future, of the people and the land, and between the mediums of filmmaking and photography. Geiger’s fellowship, which begins in January 2025, will culminate in the creation of a work to be presented to the public in Durham in spring 2026.

This is a film I have wanted to make in some iteration for several years,” Geiger says, “to learn more about my Icelandic lineage and to find my own connection to the landscape following my ancestors' disconnection through migration.

After finally visiting Iceland for the first time this fall, I became curious about the intersection of opposing perspectives towards the land—one rooted in extraction and limitless use, the other in reciprocity, bound by the inherent limits of the environment. Iceland now produces the most energy per capita of anywhere in the world—nearly half a million acres of wilderness were flooded in the creation of their largest hydropower plant—while generations-old farms are still prominent in the landscape and cultural identity. How does existence at such an intersection inform feelings about the planet's ecological future and energy dependence?

The opportunity to spend significant time in Iceland following these threads of curiosity and personal explorations will be a transformative and singular experience in my artistic practice, and I hope the story that emerges can be a catalyst for conversations about the future of our planet, and how we might find new ways to exist in relation to it.

“We are thrilled that Emma has been awarded the fourth Cassilhaus Travel Fellowship, and are particularly excited that she plans to include an artist residency component,” Ellen Cassilly and Frank Konhaus said of the Fellowship selection. “This fellowship honors our parents as great champions of both education and travel. We believe extended travel has a unique power to educate, enrich and transform people and take them places far beyond the place from which they initially disembarked. We feel fortunate to have the MFA|EDA and the Center for Documentary Studies as partners in this adventure.”

Alina Taalman (’15) was the inaugural Cassilhaus Travel Fellow; her fellowship project, the film Kolmas Punkt, was screened as part of the 2019 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. The second Cassilhaus Travel Fellow was Jason Sudak (’17); his project, Night Waves, premiered at the Power Plant Gallery in 2021. The third Cassilhaus Travel Fellow was Felicity Palma (’19), who presented her film, Eurydice, at the Rubenstein Arts Center in August 2024.

Guidelines for the next Cassilhaus Travel Fellowship competition will be shared following Geiger’s 2026 presentation.