iris yirei hu: Open Studio
Longenecker-Roth Artist in Residence
November 21, 2025
12:00 - 2:00 p.m.
Visual Arts Facility, Main Gallery, UC San Diego
iris yirei hu will share the work she's created as the 2025 Longenecker-Roth Artist in Residence at the Department of Visual Arts, UC San Diego. iris is a multidisciplinary journey-based artist from Los Angeles who works across paintings, installations, intercultural collaborations, writing, and public art.
She roots her art practice in processes of material and spiritual transformation, as evidenced in labor intensive pieces and installations that explore the subterranean realms of grief and loss, cycles of life and death, the earthly and the otherworldly, and the infinitely evolving self. Central to her practice is working across territories and peoples, through which she investigates how geography, kinship, and the sacred are reflected in cultural technologies and ecological practices. A lifelong learner, she has undertaken rigorous study of ceramics, weaving, and papermaking by being in community with culture bearers and experts, and proposes that the preservation of craft is integral to bridging cultural, geographic, and generational divides.
In 2022, LA Metro commissioned iris to design a large-scale mosaic artwork for the future UCLA/Westwood Purple Line Metro Station slated to open for the 2028 Summer Olympics. She has exhibited at the Armory Center for the Arts (Pasadena, CA); Center for Arts, Research, and Alliances (New York, NY); Museum of Contemporary Art (Tucson, AZ); Plug In Institute for Contemporary Art (Winnipeg, MB, Canada); John Michael Kohler Arts Center (Sheboygan, WI); Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery; among many other venues. Notable awards and residencies include: John Michael Kohler Arts Center Arts/Industry Artist-in-Residence in Pottery (2025), Meztli Projects Cultural Worker Fellowship (2024), California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists (2022), Headlands Center for the Arts Artist-in-Residence (2022), California Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship (2021), and Foundation for Contemporary Arts (2020 & 2018).
Artist Talk
October 30, 6:30 - 8:20 p.m.
Franklin Antonio Hall, Room 1301, UC San Diego
The Longenecker-Roth Artist in Residence Endowment was established in 2016 to extend Martha Longenecker-Roth's legacy as an artist and educator. In the spirit of her historic impact on the visual arts in both local and global communities, this endowment brings to the Visual Arts Department of UC San Diego artists of national and international stature who will inspire our students to broaden the scope, appeal, and range of art as well as incite exchange with the faculty, the campus community and local artists and audiences.
This program celebrates the life and legacy of Martha Longenecker-Roth, and her historic impact on the visual arts in San Diego and beyond. Martha’s passionate commitment to meaningful cross-cultural exchange, long before it became widely fashionable, led her to found the Mingei Art Museum and established its permanent home in San Diego’s Balboa Park. The stated mission of the museum – to bring the “art of the world, art of the people” to everyone – came from Martha’s own lived experience.
Through the Longenecker-Roth Artist in Residence program, the vision of art, culture and the world so dear to Martha will make a lasting impact on interdisciplinary art education in the Visual Arts Department at UC San Diego. As a lifelong learner, Martha Longenecker-Roth regularly attended exhibitions and lectures organized by and for UC San Diego faculty and students. She was fascinated by technology new and old, and believed in the importance of interdisciplinary education. Thus, it is our honor to host the residency program which will bring to campus artists whose practices are grounded in an understanding of the power of art to connect diverse peoples. It is toward this commitment to diverse traditions and cultural interconnectedness that the Longenecker-Roth Artist in Residence program is founded and inspired through the impact made to the visual arts through the life of Martha Longenecker-Roth.