COMING UP

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. 

UG student Jon Picinich exhibition Grit

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.

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.

UG student Tessa Chan exhibition Stories Untold

Reception: April 13, 2:00 - 4:00 p.m.

April 14, 3:00 - 5:00 p.m.; April 15, 1:00 - 3:00 p.m.

Adam D. Kamil Gallery, UC San Diego

Stories Untold is a collection of narrative-driven works shaped by a love of nature, fantasy, and storytelling. Drawing on cultural influences, these pieces explore vivid moments, imagined places, and fragments of larger worlds. I rarely show my art or writing but with this exhibit, I hope to begin sharing them more openly, hence the name Stories Untold.

erika roos MFA thesis exhibition choreographies of becoming ( a film )

Reception: April 17, 4:00 - 6:00 p.m.

April 13 - April 17, 1:00 - 5:00 p.m. or by appointment

Performance Space, Visual Arts Facility, UC San Diego

choreographies of becoming ( a film ) is a site-sensitive installation and durational performance with 16mm film. Through the interwoven, looping bodies of projector, film, screen, light,and shadow, this installation contends with how we hold memory: in movement, in muscle, in celluloid, in textile, in our relationships with one another.

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.

 

UG students Katelyn Ramirez & Mariana Mercado online exhibition Roots and Borders

Kamil Gallery Online

Roots and Borders explores Mexican-American cultural identity through themes of ancestry, immigration, and resilience. The exhibition reflects both historical and current experiences of the community, highlighting the connection between cultural roots and lived realities.

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 Victor Castañeda H in exhibition Designing the Infinite

December 6, 2025 - April 12, 2026

California Center for the Arts Museum, Escondido, CA

Worldbuilding has long served as a tool for understanding identity, community, and our place within the universe, from creation stories and cosmologies to medieval illuminated manuscripts, speculative fiction, and early experimental cinema. Designing the Infinite extends this lineage further into the digital age, bringing together artists from across the globe who use technology to construct new worlds.

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