MA Curatorial Past Exhibitions

Exhibition on view: Oct 30 – Nov 27, 2023

Wayward Refusals explored the radical creativity that results from experiences of oppression, marginalization, rejection, and non-belonging. The exhibition presented painting, sculpture, video, photography, collage and NFT – that interrogates how minoritarian subjects are portrayed as dangerous, immoral, mentally ill, and degenerate due to their racial, gendered, and sexual positions under systems of oppression. However, instead of conforming to dominant ideals of subjecthood, Wayward Refusals investigated how artists develop world-making actions despite the ever-present threats of social, legal and psychological punishments in life under capitalism. Together, these works exemplify what Saidiya Hartman describes as “wayward experiments,” embodying practices of refusal that forefront alternative ways of living.

Nail Art Workshop – Nov 18
Nail artist Keesha Clark presented a workshop to learn the techniques and principles underlying nail art as an expressive form of self-care and empowerment in the face of  pervasive, worldwide anti-Blackness incidents.

Participating Artists
Lucy Black, Cyshimi, Katinka Huang, Young Joon Kwak, Julia Mata, Coyote Park, RUTH, Toni Smalls, and Peidi Zhang

Curatorial Team
Ashley Ascencio, Chenyang Nie, Hattie Schultz, Linna Wang, Yishan Xin, Alice Zhao and Hang Zhang

Exhibition dates: Nov 5 – Dec 2, 2022

We Are Close In Distance was an exhibition that considered how physical, temporal, and archival space has the power to unite as well as divide through the excavation of interpersonal, intergenerational, and spatial intimacies. The participating artists comprised a diverse and multigenerational group. Working across media including painting, photography, poetry, performance, video, sculpture, and zines, the artists participating in We Are Close in Distance explore how intimacies are constructed, deteriorate, and are consequently reclaimed as part of the culmination of the continuously unfolding present and the lingering past.

Opening Reception & Poetry Slam – Nov 4
Poetry Slam featuring poets Aman Batra, Matthew Cuban, Jireh Deng, Kito Fortune and Yazmin Watkins

Participating Artists
Sadie Barnette, Edwin Bodney, Tonya Ingram, Amanda Gentry, Carl George, Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Ross Laycock, Ozzie Juarez, Vishal Jugdeo, Jose Guadalupe Sanchez III, Anna Sergeeva, Ron Tarver, Joey Terrill, Xirin, and Diana Zeng

Curatorial Team
Storm Bria-Rose Bookhard, taylor brock, Nadia R. Estrada, Tracy Fenix, Jiayi Hu, Valencia Monroe, Adrianne Ramsey, Diego Dela Rosa, Jonas Short, Haiyang (Kevy) Yang and Bryce Zeffert.

Exhibition dates: Jan 21 – Feb 11, 2022

unending beginnings reckons with the precarity of our existence, presenting emergent strategies that consider world-making and survival on multiple levels, micro and macro, human and nonhuman, to imagine alternative futures. Nonhuman ecologies demonstrate resurgent possibilities, providing blueprints for survival that do not adhere to humankind’s historical narratives of dominance. unending beginnings is an ode to mushrooms, water, trees, cacao beans, jungles, forests, Indigenous Resistance, and all other forms of life that do not abide by Western constructs of time. There is no end and there is no beginning, our livelihood is a multispecies entanglement dependent on collaboration and adaptability of all worlds, universes, and microcosms for survival.

Closing Reception – Feb 11
Included a performance by Angel Lartigue in collaboration with H C – (M) & Qais Assali

Participating Artists
Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio, Pia Camil, Gerald Clarke Jr., Cécile B. Evans, Colleen Hargaden, and Angel Lartigue

Curatorial Team
Emma Christ, Nahui Garcia, Lauren Guilford, Leah Perez, Austen Villacis and Ruei-Chen Tsai