COMING UP

UG student Jon Picinich exhibition Grit

Reception: March 30, 5-8 p.m., Performance: 5 p.m.

March 31 & April 1, 6-8 p.m.; April 2, 2-8 p.m.

Adam D. Kamil Gallery, UC San Diego

To have "Grit" is to persevere, to endure, to revel in the feelings of physical pain and discomfort. Jon Picinich's exploration of this idea lends itself to a physical approach to mark-making, performance, and material. The work deals with physical expression as a vessel for finding identity while grappling with what it means to be masculine.

Lecturer Dino Dinco performance in Performancear o Morir

March 31 - April 4, 2026

Norogachi, Chihuahua, Mexico

Dino Dinco will perform in Performancear o Morir 2026, an international performance art festival. The festival coincides with the traditional indigenous Tarahumara / Rarámuri ceremonial practices held during Semana Santa (Noríruachi). This is Dinco's third time presenting performance work as part of Performancear o Morir. 

Sophia Cleary MFA thesis exhibition Deep Roles

Reception: April 2, 6:00 - 8:00 p.m.

April 1 - April 4, 2026

Performance Space, Visual Arts Facility, UC San Diego

Deep Roles investigates performance as both subject and inheritance. At its center is A Doll's House, an experimental documentary short that explores the legacy of growing up in a family of performers, where the theater served as a pathway to both create and avoid intimacy. Through drawing, installation, and film, Deep Roles asks what it means to perform for, with, and against the people that came before you.

MFA alum Maddie Butler in Jedediah Caesar, Kahlil Robert Irving, Maddie Butler

Reception: April 4, 6:00 - 9:00 p.m.

April 4 - May 9, 2026

Make Room, Los Angeles, CA

Material is often understood as stable, yet across contemporary practice, it increasingly functions otherwise; materials carry within them traces of time, systems of circulation, or conditions of perception. Across these artists' respective practices, material remains unresolved, layered, mediated, and reconfigured, holding together multiple temporalities and contexts simultaneously.

Professors Danielle Dean, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, MFA alum Jamilah Sabur in Space is the Place

April 5 - September 6, 2026

Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA

A Hammer Contemporary Collection exhibition that takes its title from the 1973 studio album and 1974 film by Sun Ra. The selected works in the exhibition consider “space” as a conceptual framework, through the themes of afro-futurism, belonging, placemaking, and the act of taking up space. Space is the Place comprises installations, paintings, sculptures, photographs, and multi-media works by nearly thirty artists. 

UG student Nora Hagkull exhibition Circular Stories

Reception: April 8, 6:00 - 8:00 p.m.

April 8 - April 10, 3:00 - 6:00 p.m.

Adam D. Kamil Gallery, UC San Diego

Circular Stories is an exhibition of pieces that explore the enduring, yet constantly shifting nature of our world. I am interested in the many cycles that we see around us. The life cycle, for example, moves in a constant loop of birth, life, death, decomposition, and birth once again.

Professor Danielle Dean's Hemel premiering on Criterion Channel

The Playlist

The Criterion Channel’s April lineup has the usual deep-catalog flex, but this month’s programming feels especially sharp in the way it turns curation into argument. The headliners are not just titles but modes: corporate corruption, Cold War dissent, trans self-representation, avant-garde shorts, and the ongoing excavation of films and supplements once locked away on out-of-print physical editions.

ONGOING ON CAMPUS

Professor Emerita Faith Ringgold exhibition Full Circle–The Teachings and Her Legacy

February 28 - May 1, 2026

Mandeville Art Gallery, UC San Diego

Curated by Mashonda Tifrere, the exhibition is framed conceptually through Ringgold’s relationship to UC San Diego, where she served as professor of visual arts from 1984 to 2002. This institutional affiliation provides a lens for understanding how her academic philosophy materialized throughout her practice and impacted not only those she mentored at UC San Diego, but generations of artists around the world.

CLOSING SOON

MFA alum Sabrina Piersol exhibition Outside Your Cloud

February 20 - March 28, 2026

Jack Barrett Gallery, New York, NY

In her upcoming solo exhibition, Outside Your Cloud, Sabrina Piersol utilizes a cold, blue-and-yellow palette inspired by the long Colorado autumn to describe ephemeral, natural forms. Outside Your Cloud is on view from February 20 to March 28 at Jack Barrett Gallery in New York City.

MFA student Jamil G Baldwin, UG alum Kiko Thomas in exhibition Of the People

January 20, 2026 - March 28, 2026

Rutgers–Camden Center for the Arts, Camden, NJ

Of the People features a selection of works on paper by contemporary artists from across the United States who responded to the question: what does American Democracy mean to you? Through investigative research, consulting various formal and informal repositories of knowledge, and reflecting inwardly, this group of artists particularly consider the meaning of American democracy in the present moment.

BA alum Francesca Hummler in Psyops And Photo Ops

March 6 - March 28, 2026

La Luz De Jesus, Los Angeles, CA 

This group exhibition at La Luz De Jesus brings together artists engaging with image-making as persuasion, spectacle, and intervention. I will be presenting two works from Rituals that examine the symbolic charge embedded in religious objects.

Professor Amy Adler online screening Rag Dolls in 5 Films for Freedom

March 18 - March 29, 2026

BFI Flare + British Council, UK

Each year we select five films from the BFI Flare programme and make them available online for audiences around the world for free for 12 days. The programme champions the power of storytelling to spark deeper understanding and change, showcasing diverse voices and perspectives that remind us that, no matter who we are or where we are, the need for love and self-expression is universal.

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