| | |
Due January 31, 2026
visartssymposiumucsd@gmail.com
For the inaugural Symposium and Exhibition presented through UCSD’s Art and Media History, Theory and Criticism department, we invite contributions that expand between fields and disciplines to consider liminality experientially, methodologically, and/or critically, and which present as zones of both vulnerability and possibility.
| | | |
January 27 - January 31, 11:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
SME Gallery, Structural & Materials Engineering, UCSD
Provisional methods and temporary structures shape a photographic process guided by necessity, adaptation, and incomplete solutions. Making remains open and responsive, always on the verge of becoming something else.
| | | |
January 27 - January 30, 1:00 - 4:00 p.m.
Adam D. Kamil Gallery, UC San Diego
In this body of work, I study the ocean as a place where stillness and pressure coexist, capturing moments that hold both calm and power. The work reflects on the surface of the water as a fragile boundary, one that contains immense force beneath it.
| | | |
Reception: January 28, 6:30 - 9:30 p.m.
January 28 - January 31, 2026
Galería Jorge Martínez, Guadalajara, Mexico
Beyond the Machines brings together artistic practices that oscillate between handmade gestures and digitally assisted production: MFA alumni Aitor Lajarin-Encina, Carolina Montejo, Juan Bastardo, Işık Kaya, Mingyong Cheng, Paolo Zuñiga, Victor Castañeda H, Zebulon Zang, Professor Rubén Ortiz-Torres, and Professor Ricardo Dominguez's Electronic Disturbance Theater.
| | | |
January 29, 5:00 p.m.
Atkinson Hall, CALIT2 Theater, UC San Diego
Qualcomm Institute’s IDEAS series opens its new season with BFF: A Dog Walk by Jesse R Fleming & Robert Twomey, an interactive walk and talk with two robot dogs through a guided landscape examining the nature of LLMs, AI alignment, and frontiers of machine intimacy.
| | | |
January 31, 2:30 - 5:00 p.m.
Suraj Israni Center for Cinematic Arts, UC San Diego
All are invited to the 2026 Suraj Israni Memorial Lecture, featuring Emmy-winning producer, studio builder, and UC San Diego Visual Arts MFA alumna Marge Dean. As Head of the Studio at Skybound Entertainment, Dean leads the development and production of original animated content and is building a new production facility behind major properties including Invincible for Amazon Prime.
| | | |
Reception: January 31, 4:00 - 6:00 p.m.
January 31, 2026 - April 18, 2026
Judith Harris Art Gallery, San Diego Public Library
M(other) Tongue brings together artists who use textile to examine the interconnected experiences of migration, displacement, and cultural inheritance. Drawing on textile traditions rooted in women’s domestic and communal practices, the works approach stitching, weaving, and dyeing as forms of mark making; methods of carrying ancestral stories across borders and generations.
| | | |
January 31, 5:00 - 8:00 p.m.
MXCL BNL LAB, Whittier, CA
Join us next Saturday for the launch of Alien, a three-part artist book produced by Taller California and the MexiCali Biennial in collaboration with Armando Pulido. The publication brings together the work of five artists: Ed Gómez, Luis G. Hernández, Lorena Mostajo, Omar Pimienta, and Jessica Sevilla.
| | | |
Reception: February 2, 5:00 - 8:00 p.m.
February 3 - February 5, 3:00 - 6:00 p.m.
Adam D. Kamil Gallery, UC San Diego
Hasta La Raíz explores the intersection of textile, pattern, and cultural identity through portraiture as living carriers of cultural memory. The work reflects on Mexican-American identity, navigating the space between two cultures while resisting the erasure that can accompany acculturation.
| | | |
Performance: February 3, 5:00 p.m.
Gallery Hours: February 2 - February 6, 2026
by appointment
Experimental Theater, Conrad Prebys Music Center, UCSD
Moving image installation with live score by Michelle Sui, performed live by the first year DMA/PhD cohort of the UCSD Department of Music.
| | | |
February 4, 6:00 - 8:00 p.m.
SME 149, Structural & Materials Engineering, UCSD
Steve Fagin is an American artist and former professor of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego. He has produced a series of feature length videos, including The Amazing Voyage of Gustave Flaubert and Raymond Roussel, The Machine That Killed Bad People, and TropiCola (the latter produced in collaboration with some of the most important theatre actors and producers in Havana).
| | | |
February 9 - February 10, 2026
Museum of Contemporary Art, Univ. São Paulo, Brazil
Bringing together researchers, curators, artists, and collections professionals, the seminar explores the historical intersections between art and information technologies. It emphasizes how critical and activist practices were already creating alternative technological experiences, independent networks, and counter-hegemonic strategies within the digital field.
| | | | | |
The Guardian, UC San Diego
Mandeville Gallery’s latest Master of Fine Arts exhibition, “To Hold is To Be Held,” opened last Thursday, Jan. 15, drawing in a large and eager crowd of students, faculty, and art appreciators alike. The exhibit explores the idea of a frame not merely as a border, but as a container that shapes how viewers interpret images and objects.
| | | | | |
Tulsa Artist Fellowship is pleased to announce the 2026–2028 Tulsa Artist Fellowship Awardees, a cohort of ten accomplished artists and arts workers selected through a highly competitive national open call. Working across visual art, film, writing, sound, and performance, the awardees bring rigorous, publicly engaged practices that position Tulsa as a hub for ambitious, cross-disciplinary work and national creative exchange.
| | | | | |
MER.BOOKS
From 2021 to 2024, the historic Maison Routier in Saint-Cirq-Lapopie became a hub for bold ideas, artistic exchange, and radical imagination. Founded by Belgian choreographer Chantal Yzermans, Radicale1924 welcomed visionary artists, researchers, and creators, carrying forward a village tradition once home to André and Elisa Breton.
| | | |
January 14 - February 28, 2026
Quint ONE, San Diego, CA
Known for a growing cast of anonymous individuals concealed in patterned, form-fitting fabrics, Chapin paints ambiguous scenes of them languorously existing in a manufactured mid-century purgatory. In this ongoing practice informed by both modern advertising and contemporary social media influencer culture, Chapin forges an entanglement between the collapsing dichotomies of the real and the artificial, and the valuable and valueless.
| | | |
January 11 - February 14, 2026
Air de Paris, Paris, France
Titled after a 1949 drawing by Toyen and framed by his monograph Royal Book Lodge (Berlin: Hatje Cantz, 2023), Welchman draws on Raoul Vaneigem’s tart critique of Surrealism set out in Histoire désinvolte du surrealism (A Cavalier History of Surrealism,1977) to discuss how Bourgoin, Susin and their RBL friends and colleagues worked through an epistemological and aesthetic inquiry that developed a salient dispute with the historical deployment of alchemical metaphoricity.
| | | | | |
UC San Diego Today
What does it take to cultivate a multi-decade career in the animation field? For Marge Dean – a UC San Diego visual arts alumna who has spent over 30 years in the industry – it’s a mixture of passion and perseverance. Her passion builds collaborative creative teams that experiment with new forms of storytelling, which is grounded in a tenacious commitment to uplifting unsung voices.
| | | |
January 15 - February 13, 2026
Mandeville Art Gallery, UC San Diego
Participating artists: Jamil Baldwin, Rahul Basu, Sophia Cleary, Walker Hewitt, Izzai Martinez Angulo, Aambr Newsome, erika roos, and Andrew Wharton. The group exhibition To Hold is To Be Held features Visual Arts MFA students in their final year, serving as a preview to their thesis projects. Curatorial Advisor: Selene Preciado, Curator and Director of Programs, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE).
| | | |
January 17 - January 29, 2026
CSULB Galleries, Long Beach, CA
This mixed-media exhibition showcases exceptional work by MFA students from 14 graduate programs across Southern California. GLAMFA is an entirely student-run endeavor that provides opportunities to connect with our broader MFA cohort. Through the central exhibition, affiliated events, and catalog publication, GLAMFA cultivates a community of emerging artists, stoking critical dialogue and lasting social camaraderie.
| | | |
November 15, 2025 - January 31, 2026
LUBOV, New York, NY
My Barbarian (Malik Gaines, Jade Gordon, Alexandro Segade) presents Cat Suit, a series of prints representing the first 14 Minor Arcana cards alongside the video installation and sculpture. The exhibition debuts Nine of Cats (2025), a new video installation made with Eric Geiger, Matana Roberts, and Argel Rojo. The works suggest that all the joyful and tragic experiences foretold by the cards have already happened to those who came before us.
| | | |
December 18, 2025 - January 31, 2026
Artist Curated Projects, Los Angeles, CA
For those who crawl inside with urges that defy their logical, structural custodians, who look around and see only somatic frenzy in the hall of infinitely reflective hypocrisy. Is there something redemptive burgeoning in the brink of collapse? We must invent poetry for the new world because it will not simply come to us. The false progression of the world is a cataract in beauty’s eye.
| | | |
June 21, 2025 - February 1, 2026
ICA Central, San Diego, CA
The annual exhibition celebrates emerging artistic voices and highlights the innovative work being produced across the San Diego and Baja California region. Through NextGen, ICA San Diego provides local emerging artists with both exhibition opportunities and professional development, while highlighting the strength of our creative community.
| | | |
November 8, 2025 - February 1, 2026
La Jolla Historical Society, La Jolla, CA
Double Bill: The Art of Manny Farber and Patricia Patterson will explore the creative partnership of the celebrated husband-and-wife painters, highlighting how life in Leucadia and their work at UC San Diego shaped their distinct artistic voices. The exhibition presents paintings, sketches, photographs, and archival materials that offer insight into their individual practices and shared creative world.
| | | |
September 26, 2025 - February 8, 2026
MUDAM, The Contemporary Art Museum of Luxembourg
This first major retrospective since 1999 – and the first ever in Europe – presents Antin’s œuvre in full breadth. The exhibition highlights the continued relevance and influence of her work from the late 1960s till today, when issues of power imbalance and collective and individual representation have taken on renewed urgency.
| | | To submit an item for future newsletters, please read the guidelines and complete THIS FORM. | | | | |
