News & Events

This is an outline of events produced by the Department for the current quarter. Sign up for our Weekly Newsletter to keep up-to-date with these and other events from our Students, Faculty, and Alumni! Submit items for the newsletter by completing the Submission Form.

Spring 2025

Mendi + Keith Obadike

Artist Talk on occasion of their exhibition The Skeuomorph opening at Gallery QI

April 3, 2025
5:00 - 7:00 p.m.
Gallery QI, Atkinson Hall Auditorium, UC San Diego

Mendi + Keith Obadike are artists, composers, and writers. Their works sit at the intersection of art, music, and language and draw upon histories of experimental media art and performance. Rooted in African-American freedom struggles and Igbo cosmology, The Skeuomorph unfolds as a poetic meditation on technological agency and the myths we encode in our machines.

RATTLEBONE

Coralys Carter MFA thesis exhibition

Reception: April 4, 5:00 - 7:30 p.m.
April 7 - April 11, 2025 by appointment
Main Gallery + Performance Space, Visual Arts Facility, UC San Diego

In RATTLEBONE, Coralys Carter lends flesh to memory. Through sculpture, etchings, and textiles, Carter contends with the places memories reside: in our objects, in our homes, and in ourselves. Carter’s work sinks into the many meanings of objects, their uses, and places within and outside of the body where memory is made. The Midwest, its landscapes, its objects, and its people are central to the memory-scape that Carter takes up in RATTLEBONE.

Nelwat

Moe Penders Ramos MFA thesis exhibition

Reception: April 4, 5:00 - 7:30 p.m.
Performance: April 10, 7:00 - 7:30 p.m.
April 4 - April 18, 2025
SME Gallery, Structural & Materials Engineering, UC San Diego

Please join Moe Penders Ramos at their thesis show opening on April 4th from 5:00 pm to. 7:30 pm. Nelwat (root in nahuat) is a culmination of work pertaining to themes of cuirness, migration, and translation. Join us for a sound performance on April 10th from 7:00 pm to 7:30 pm as a part of Moe's exploration of maps as graphic scores. Guest musicians performing include Lyra Montoya, Emir Chacra, and Ana Luisa Díaz.

There Are Cathedrals Everywhere For Those With Eyes To See

UG student Jaime Leynes exhibition

Reception: April 7, 6:00 - 8:00 p.m.
April 7 - April 11, 1:00 - 4:00 p.m.
Adam D. Kamil Gallery, UC San Diego

These works aim to explore and uplift the very intrinsic nature of existence and connectedness, through pieces which delve into explorations of a Filipino identity, a religious upbringing, subcultural affiliations, as well as friends and family.

Mar y Monarcas

UG students Natalia Hernandez & James-Keith Chiswell exhibition

Reception: April 14, 5:00 - 7:00 p.m.
April 15 - April 18, 1:00 - 4:00 p.m.
Adam D. Kamil Gallery, UC San Diego

Mar y Monarcas is an interdisciplinary joint exhibition of works by Natalia Hernandez and James-Keith Chiswell, including video installation, sculpture, painting, photography, and more. Though we have very separate stories and experiences, we connect through the depth of our emotion, the way we love ourselves and those around us, and how we channel all of that into the art we create.

Trace

Gustavo Martinez MFA thesis exhibition

Reception: April 25, 5:00 - 7:30 p.m.
April 21 - April 25, 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m., by appointment after 5 p.m.
Main Gallery, Visual Arts Facility, UC San Diego

TRACE is an exhibition by Gustavo Martinez that explores vacant and abandoned spaces as sites of cultural and social transformation in Inglewood and South Los Angeles. Through aerial, digital, and film photography, the work traces how these landscapes hold stories of belonging and preservation, even as communities navigate the city’s notion of progress and development. This body of work reflects on how physical erasure challenges and disrupts the community’s ability to remain present.

Mary Mattingly

Remote Artist Talk

April 25, 2025
1:00 - 2:30 p.m.
YouTube Livestream

Mary Mattingly (b. 1978) is an interdisciplinary artist who cares deeply about water and believes in the power of public art. She founded Swale, an edible landscape on a public barge in New York City. Recent public art projects include Limnal Lacrimosa in Glacier National Park, Public Water with +More Art in New York, Vanishing Point with Metal Southend and Focal Point Gallery in the UK.

Growing Pains (exploring nostalgia)

UG student Madelynne Nguyen exhibition

Reception: April 29, 5:00 - 8:00 p.m.
April 28 & 30, May 1 & 2; 3:00 - 6:00 p.m.
Adam D. Kamil Gallery, UC San Diego

In this exhibition, I explore the profound intersection of nostalgia, childhood, mourning, and loss. Through this journey, I invite viewers to reflect on their own lived experiences in escaping consuming nostalgia in order to newly contextualize their relationships with themselves and loved ones.

Set You Free

Nykelle DeVivo MFA thesis exhibition

Reception: May 3, 12:00 - 4:00 p.m.
May 5 - May 10, 2025 by Appointment
Main Gallery, Visual Arts Facility, UC San Diego

Set You Free explores the embodiment of Anarkata, a spiritual and political force rooted in Black anarchist traditions, as a catalyst for liberation. Channeling ancestral rage, resistance, and love, the work combines video, sculpture, and photographic works to dismantle oppressive structures, advocating for violence as a transformative act of futurity. By invoking Afrofuturist and anarchist methodologies, the project envisions a world beyond empire, centering Black trans joy and resilience as revolutionary blueprints for our collective freedom.

Search Term

Maddie Butler MFA thesis exhibition

Reception: May 3, 12:00 - 4:00 p.m.
May 3 - May 17, 2025
SME Gallery, Structural & Materials Engineering, UC San Diego

Search Term shines light on the interface. Through installation, sculpture, video and collage, Maddie Butler brings attention to the technologies of mediation that govern daily life. The exhibition tests the porosity of barriers like the screen and the window, interfering with their structure in order to clarify their function. Employing methods like framing, reflection, dis- and re-assembly, Butler redirects the gaze inwards. The result is a mise-en-abyme of the apparatus itself.

Shirley Tse

Remote Artist Talk

May 7, 2025
5:00 - 6:30 p.m.
YouTube Livestream

Los Angeles-based artist Shirley Tse (b.1968) works in sculpture, installation, photography, and text. She deconstructs our world of synthetic objects that carry paradoxical meanings and constructs different models in which differences might come together. Various strategies of visualising heterogeneity are used: conflating different scales, fusing the organic with the industrial, crossing between the literal and the metaphorical, merging different narratives, and collapsing the subject and object relationship.

Ombligo a la Tierra

UG student Maya Rosado exhibition

Reception: May 9, 1:00 - 4:00 p.m.
Adam D. Kamil Gallery, UC San Diego

Ombligo a la Tierra is a photographic series that explores the body as a sacred site, where the womb holds memory, spirit, and the power of creation. Rooted in the teachings of Indigenous elder women from my community of North and Central American ancestry, this work moves through lived experiences with the womb—its pain, resilience, and the site where healthcare becomes a sacred ritual. Told through both personal and collective narratives, this auto-ethnographic work traces the intimate intersections of the body as a ceremony, serving as an archive that holds space for ancestral knowledge.

15th Annual Adam D. Kamil Media Awards

Ceremony: May 16, 5:00 - 7:00 p.m.
Exhibition: May 15 - May 21, 2025
Adam D. Kamil Gallery, Mandeville Center, UC San Diego

The Kamil family, Department of Visual Arts, and School of Arts and Humanities at UC San Diego invite you to the 15th Annual Adam D. Kamil Media Awards Ceremony. Please join us for an evening of film and creativity to honor the memory of Adam Douglas Kamil and showcase the talent of undergraduate UC San Diego students. The awards ceremony will be followed by the annual Adam D. Kamil Guest Lecture at the Suraj Israni Center for Cinematic Arts at 7:30 p.m.!

Daniel Scheinert

Annual Adam D. Kamil Guest Lecture

May 16, 2025
7:30 - 9:00 p.m.
The Suraj Israni Center for Cinematic Arts, UC San Diego

Daniel Scheinert, originally from Birmingham, Alabama, is one-half of the filmmaking duo Daniels. He’s the kind of director who asks, "What if a corpse farted?"—and then goes on to make Swiss Army Man (2016). He followed that up with The Death of Dick Long (2019), a darkly hilarious film set in his hometown. Then came Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022), an award-winning, mind-bending journey through the multiverse that cemented Daniels’ commitment for blending the surreal with the profound.

Waiting to be Held

Olivia Kayang MFA thesis exhibition

May 19 - May 24, 2025
Time: Sunrise to Sunset
Performance Space, Visual Arts Facility, UC San Diego

Hold we to the centre of remembrance
To utter the whispers lodged in the throat
To acknowledge the precarity of breath and preserve it

Jackie Amézquita

Artist Talk

May 27, 2025
6:30 - 8:00 p.m.
SME 149, Structural & Materials Engineering, UC San Diego

Jackie Amézquita (Quetzaltengo, Guatemala, b.1985) lives and works in Los Angeles, California. She is an artist with a multidisciplinary practice. Her research is articulated through the use of biomaterials and forms associated with pre-Columbian cultures. Amézquita creates public performances, installations, and objects that fuse indigenous mythologies with contemporary community engagement.

Mortal Essence

UG Senior Studio exhibition

Reception: May 28, 6:00 - 8:00 p.m.
May 27 - May 30, 1:00 - 4:00 p.m.
Adam D. Kamil Gallery, UC San Diego

Angelo Aguila, Ashley Barnard, Youngmi Bombach, Kyra Brantley, Julia Bushman, Malika Charles, Sheeva Davari, Kaia Eichenberger, Ava Milan Guardado, Aria Kupperstein, Jaime Leynes, David Lovell, Armando Merino, Heather Nicosia, Sarah Obregon, Rhea Patel, Lauren Reed, Mariam Shamilian, Cameron Smith, Kaitlyn Thompson, William Ung, Aditya Venkatesh, Jeana Yoon

Afectos Travesti

Xelestial Moreno-Luz 1st year MFA exhibition

May 29, 6:00 - 8:00 p.m.
Commons Gallery, VAF 404, Visual Arts Facility, UC San Diego

Afectos Travesti is a flash-film photography installation situated within a trans gaze. The show honors the poetics of travesti memory and presence in nightlife, arts, and activism. Xelestial traverses the flesh of desire, traces of trans memory, and magical agency — animated through moments in the dark, images where we contest the shadows, and amorously bathed in light. Set by DJ BAPUJI, Food, and ASL interpretation available.

Sonder

Studio Honors exhibition

Reception: June 5, 6:00 - 8:00 p.m.
June 2 - June 4, 1:00 - 4:00 p.m.
Adam D. Kamil Gallery, UC San Diego

Sonder is a collective exhibition by the 2025 Studio Art Honors cohort, which explores the profound realization that every individual leads a life as complex and rich as one's own. This exhibition showcases distinct, thoughtfully developed works that reflect the unique perspectives and artistic niches of each honors student, cultivated over the past two academic quarters.

Bits & Bops

VIS 147A class exhibition

Reception: June 4, 5:00 - 7:00 p.m.
June 3 - June 5, 12:00 - 7:00 p.m.
SME Gallery, Structural & Materials Engineering, UC San Diego

Students develop artworks and installations that utilize digital electronics. Techniques in digital electronic construction and computer interfacing for interactive control of sound, lighting, and electromechanics. Construction of devices that responsively adapt artworks to conditions involving viewer participation, space activation, machine intelligence.

The Solar Archive Project

Allison O. Evans PhD dissertation exhibition

Reception: June 7, 4:00 - 6:00 p.m.
June 4 - June 7, 3:00 - 6:00 p.m.
Performance Space, Visual Arts Facility, UC San Diego

The Solar Archive Project is a PhD dissertation exhibition that explores the instability (and indeterminacy) of the photographic archive. In this project, sunlight exists as an agent in the creation of its own record—both chemically and physically—bleaching, darkening, and affecting the archival materials subject to its radiation. As part of the exhibition, there will be screenings of Blind Spot, an experimental 16mm film that centers on the history and practice of sungazing.

The Last Planet

Speculative Design Senior exhibition

Reception: June 9, 5:00 - 7:00 p.m.
June 9 - June 13, 2025
SME Gallery, Structural & Materials Engineering, UC San Diego

The Last Planet explores molecular to galactic provocations of life on Earth and elsewhere. Toying with radical botany, cosmic masterplanning, non-fiction science fiction, collective madness, sentient and diseased architecture, and artificial alchemy, few questions go unasked in this eclectic exhibition—the mic-drop for our graduating Speculative Design provocateurs. Food and drinks will be served.

The Internet Can't Archive This Feeling

UG Senior ICAM exhibition

Reception: June 10, 3:00 - 6:00 p.m.
June 11 - June 12, 12:00 - 5:00 p.m.
Adam D. Kamil Gallery, UC San Diego

Presented by senior ICAM students, this exhibition showcases their capstone projects of a wide range of works–from interactive installations and games to sound, video, and experimental media. Each project merges art and technology to explore a variety of themes and unique perspectives developed over two quarters.

If Only You Knew

Undergraduate Group Exhibition: VIS 164, 168, 174

Opening Reception: June 11, 4:00 - 8:00 p.m.
June 12, 4:00 - 8:00 p.m.
Closing Reception: June 13, 6:00 p.m.
Commons Gallery, VAF 404, Visual Arts Facility, UC San Diego

Step into a space where fear is forgotten and creation runs wild. If Only You Knew is a student art exhibition that invites you to witness what happens when artists let go of expectations and lean into vulnerability, curiosity, and raw expression. Join us on June 11th at Common’s Gallery VAF 404 for an evening of experimentation and play. You might just leave seeing art, and yourself, a little differently.

Rotten Thoughts

UG student Vittoria Amalia Tenino exhibition

Reception: June 17, 5:00 - 7:00 p.m.
June 18 - June 19, 1:00 - 4:00 p.m.
Adam D. Kamil Gallery, UC San Diego

Rotten Thoughts is an interactive experiment at the bleeding edge of brain-computer interface and mushroom-human communication. Attending subjects will be able to wear a neural interface and connect their internal mental processes with a room-scale installation of real-time generative art. 

Recent Publications

The Revolution Takes Form

By Assistant Professor Jordan Marc Rose

During the French Revolution of 1830, insurgents raised some four thousand barricades. Afterward, lithographs of the street fighting flowed from the presses, creating the barricade’s first imagery. This book documents the changing political valence of the revolutionary ideals associated with the barricade in France from 1830 to 1852.

Field Journal #26

Founded & Edited by Professor Grant Kester

We are living through a singular cultural moment in which the conventional relationship between art and the social world, and between artist and viewer, is being questioned and renegotiated. FIELD responds to the remarkable proliferation of new artistic practices devoted to forms of political, social and cultural transformation.

Beyond the Sovereign Self

By Professor Grant Kester

In Beyond the Sovereign Self Grant H. Kester continues the critique of aesthetic autonomy begun in The Sovereign Self, showing how socially engaged art provides an alternative aesthetic with greater possibilities for critical practice. Instead of grounding art in its distance from the social, Kester shows how socially engaged art, developed in conjunction with forms of social or political resistance, encourages the creative capacity required for collective political transformation.

The Sovereign Self

By Professor Grant Kester

In The Sovereign Self, Grant H. Kester examines the evolving discourse of aesthetic autonomy from its origins in the Enlightenment through avant-garde projects and movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Kester traces the idea of aesthetic autonomy—the sense that art should be autonomous from social forces while retaining the ability to reflect back critically on society.

Autodrive

By Professor Jordan Crandall

Autodrive is a work of literary fiction that melds techno-scientific inquiry and storytelling, critical theory and comedy, speculative fiction and satire. It is a road novel of sorts, an odyssey along the highways at a time when a new form of superintelligence has emerged.

Royal Book Lodge

By Professor John C. Welchman

A study and a guidance device, the first book on the Royal Book Lodge (RBL) is the culmination a three-year exploration by art historian and cultural commentator John C. Welchman. It examines the contribution of the RBL to an array of art, film and performance practices including photography, ceramics, writing, and publishing—centered on the creation of artist books and the powerful and wide-ranging dialogue and material experimentations they engender.

Spatializing Justice: Building Blocks

By Professor Teddy Cruz & Fonna Forman

With these thirty short, manifesto-like texts—building blocks for a new kind of architecture—Spatializing Justice offers a practical handbook for confronting social and economic inequality and uneven urban growth in architectural and planning practice, urging practitioners to adopt approaches that range from redefining infrastructure to retrofitting McMansions.

Michael in Black

By Associate Professor Nicole Miller

This first monograph on artist and filmmaker Nicole Miller focuses on a single sculpture by the artist: Michael in Black (2018). This book brings together a cohort of writers and other artists through newly commissioned texts and works for the page, as well as republished texts and images that exist as their own whole.

GRAD EXHIBITIONS ONLINE

This site hosts online representations for the annual Graduate Open Studios. Documentation of gallery exhibitions and the screening program are viewable, along with links to each participating artist's studio page. Past Open Studios and MFA Thesis exhibitions are also viewable.

visarts.ucsd.edu/gradexhibitions

KAMIL GALLERY ONLINE

The Adam D. Kamil Gallery is a site for undergraduate art shows and hosts the annual Adam D. Kamil Media Awards. Visual Arts majors and minors at the junior or senior level are eligible to submit a proposal to show in the Kamil Gallery for one week during the academic school year. The online gallery is available to students throughout the year and can be used to share documentation of gallery exhibitions, or exclusively online exhibitions.

visarts.ucsd.edu/kamilgallery