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

May 28, 5:30 - 7:30 p.m.

Geisel Library, Seuss Room

Drawing from their latest works, “Freeset” and “Loka,” the authors will explore how speculative fiction can address timely societal issues, including identity, memory and technology. The conversation will be moderated by Jac Jemc, Teaching Professor of Literary Arts and Faculty Director of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop.

May 28, 8:00 - 11:59 p.m.

Bendito Bar, Tijuana, MX

Continuing the robust history between nightlife and performance art, Lecturer DINO DINCO launches the series, PERVERTIDO in Tijuana, México. The inaugural event features new performance work from Chimuelo (Tijuana), alumni Navíl Martínez (San Diego), Ian Guzmán & student Ariya Uyeno (San Diego), and Gregory Barnett (Los Angeles).

May 29, 6:00 - 8:00 p.m.

Commons Gallery, Visual Arts Facilities, UC San Diego

This show celebrates the first year of my MFA journey and honors the poetics of travesti memory and presence in nightlife, arts, and activism. Rooted in photography, my work navigates the intersections of trans identity, affects, and the audacity of living, tenderly archiving what refuses to be erased. Sounds by DJ Bapuji will be moving us through the evening.

May 29, 2025

CalArts, Santa Clarita, CA

The Cultural Studies Association's Annual Conference theme, “Imaginary Futures: Utopias, Dystopias, and Protopias of Cultural Studies,” calls upon us to interrogate the material, conceptual, and experiential openings and closures created in imagining a future-to-come. How does this casting forward afford opportunities to imagine other modes of being, or in its inverse, create closures that exclude, other, and abject manners of living that do not fit within a “utopian” framework?

May 30, 6:00 - 8:00 p.m.

Suraj Israni Center for Cinematic Arts, UC San Diego

The event will include screenings and discussions with Visual Arts MFA student Xelestial Moreno-Luz, UG Media majors Jenna Allred, Kathleen Hoang, Arnold Villagrana, Sparrow Hargrove, and Rik Van Hoorn.

Reception: May 31, 1:00 - 4:00 p.m.

May 31 - June 27, 2025

Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA

Claremont Graduate University's Art Department is pleased to invite you to the SoCal MFA regional group exhibition. SoCal MFA is a juried exhibition of emerging graduate student artists from the region's vibrant MFA community.

Reception: May 31, 4:00 - 7:00 p.m.

May 31 - July 19, 2025

Vielmetter, Los Angeles, CA

Paul Mpagi Sepuya creates photographs that weave together histories and possibilities of portraiture, queer and homoerotic networks of production and collaboration, and the material and conceptual potential of blackness at the heart of the medium.

Reception: May 31, 7:00 - 10:00 p.m.

May 31 - June 22, 2025

Persons Unknown Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

Collective imagination is constantly pulled to an immediate future by the media and mainstream discourses with their emphasis on innovation and creativity, the promises and dangers of artificial intelligence and space travel, and the imminence of an ecological collapse that feels all too present.

June 1, 3:00 p.m.

Orange County Museum of Art, Costa Mesa, CA

Since the 1990s, Adler has worked with pastels, embracing an intimate, slow, and laborious process to image-making as a means of reflecting on the power of narrative and the construction of identity. Her exhibition Nice Girl presents a new body of work that examines the selfie, an everyday image-making activity, as a new visual lexicon, one that operates between the public and private.

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.

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.

June 10 - June 21, 2025

Reception: June 13, 6:00 - 9:00 p.m.

Human Resources, Los Angeles, CA

Started in 2021, this project merges experimental theater and public performance to ask what it means to belong to a public. Alongside different groups of performers, I repurposed journalistic imagery to develop site-specific performances across Los Angeles, blending collective memory with the everyday cityscape.

Reception: June 11, 4:00 - 8:00 p.m.

June 12, 4:00 - 8:00 p.m.

Closing: June 13, 6:00 p.m.

Commons Gallery, 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. You might just leave seeing art, and yourself, a little differently.

May 22 - August 10, 2025

REDCAT, Los Angeles, CA

Hande Sever explores cultural and political archives by excavating texts and images that shape historical narratives. Often drawing from her own family’s history of persecution, her work examines the intersection of personal and collective memory, particularly in the context of military violence, surveillance, and censorship. Take off your eyes presents two bodies of work rooted in Southern California collections.

May 24 - July 20, 2025

Studio Culture, San Diego, CA

Part of several exhibitions opening at Studio Culture, a new non-profit arts org that provides affordable spaces for artists to develop and exhibit their work. Zebulon Zang presents "A Complete Waste of Time & Energy" and Diana Benavídez is included in "8 Outlets."

May 9, 2025 - Ongoing

Wereld Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Increasingly, the question is being asked whether museums should return collections to their countries of origin. Politicians, activists and communities from former European colonies advocate returning objects to their countries of origin. Museums themselves are also asking critical questions: how did these objects end up in their collections? And who do they actually belong to? 

March 1 - June 15, 2025

Mandeville Art Gallery, UC San Diego

Border Craft is a group exhibition featuring contemporary artists employing craft practices to address the geopolitical realities of borderland regions. The works on view serve as a feminist and critical counterpoint to dehumanizing systems designed to divide people and cultures. The exhibition includes MFA alum Isidro Pérez García and Longenecker-Roth Artist in Residence, Tanya Aguiñiga.

October 4, 2024 - Ongoing

Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography

Embodied Pacific: Ocean Unseen invites you to explore Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Indigenous science through the eyes of contemporary artists. Collectively, the exhibition asks us to consider how ocean science technology is not just about “high-tech” but also very much about the tools we use to shape our understanding of the ocean’s unseen mysteries.