Alumni Spotlight: March 2022
UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture alumni from all four academic departments — Architecture and Urban Design, Art, Design Media Arts, and World Arts and Cultures/Dance — and from our Visual and Performing Arts Education minor — submitted updates about their work and accomplishments since graduating from UCLA. This column features their achievements, awards, publications, and other honors, as well as upcoming events related to their work.
Upcoming Exhibitions and Performances
Ricky Amadour ’18 (B.A., art) will present an artist talk Wednesday, Mar. 9 at 7 p.m. on their debut solo exhibition Prajñā Tree, on view at Athenessa Gallery in Los Angeles through Mar. 12. This talk will be hosted in-person at Athenessa Gallery and on Zoom.
Kyla Barkin ’96 (B.A., dance) presents “An Evening of Math & Dance” featuring Barkin/Selissen Project’s Differential Cohomology; Dance of the Diagram at Gerald W. Lynch Theater in New York on Apr. 29 and 30. Barkin will also stage “Accidental Suite; A Celebration of Dance and Human Connection” at Fotografiska in New York on Apr. 1 at 7 p.m.
Roberto Delgado ’76 (M.F.A., art) is exhibiting the painting “The Drummer and the Lady” at the Geffen Playhouse for the 25th anniversary season production of Power of Sail. Delgado is also working on a series of 10 murals for the Lacy Community Center in the Greenwood District of Tulsa commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre.
Danielle Eubank ’91 (B.A., design media arts) and ‘94 (M.F.A. media arts) is a Los Angeles-based artist whose solo exhibition of paintings, One Artist Five Oceans, is on view at Santa Ana College’s Main Gallery through Apr. 7.
Nikita Gale ’16 (M.F.A., art) is showing Nikita Gale: END OF SUBJECT at 52 Walker, New York through Mar. 26.
Anna Glantz ’11 (B.A., art) has a solo exhibition at Chris Sharp Gallery in Los Angeles from Mar. 19–Apr. 23.
EJ Hill ’13 (M.F.A, art), Jason Rhoades ’93 (M.F.A, art), and Eric Wesley ’96 (B.A., art) will have work in the Whitney Biennial 2022 exhibition, entitled Quiet as It's Kept, opening on Apr. 6. Hill is also showing Wherever we will to root at Oxy Arts in Los Angeles through Apr. 22.
Black and white photo Janet Kusnick, 5 O'Clock Shadows #6.
Janet Kusnick ’65 (B.A, art) will be part of a panel discussion at WonderCon – an annual comic book, science fiction, and film convention – on April 2, to discuss “Storyboards, The Unseen Art Of Hollywood." Kusnick, a storyboard artist and concept illustrator, also had a black and white photograph titled 5 O'Clock Shadows #6 included in the LA Art Association's online show Penumbra in January.
Gwynn Murrill ’72 (M.F.A., art) is the subject of the survey show Gwynn Murrill: Animal Nature at the Pepperdine University Center for the Arts from May 21–Jul. 31.
Eamon Ore-Giron ’06 (M.F.A., art) is showing Competing With Lightning/Rivalizando con el Relámpago at MCA Denver through May 22.
Gary Paller ’77 (M.F.A., art) is showing work with Jimi Gleason in the exhibition Harmonic Refraction at R.B. Stevenson Gallery in La Jolla through Apr. 2.
Maya Sun ’76 (B.A., art) created a room-sized installation UnderGround that was acquired by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles for its permanent collection in 1993, and will be exhibited in Lonesome Crowded West: Works from MOCA's Collection, on view from Apr. 24 – Sep. 25. The installation honors the Chinese agricultural workers in California in the turn of the last century and reveals violence in Chinatowns nationwide during that era.
Wu Tsang ’10 (M.F.A., art) will have work in the Venice Biennale 2022, entitled The Milk of Dreams, opening on Apr. 23.
Anne van Leeuwen ’71 (B.A., art) will show work in the exhibition Flower Obsession at the MyMicroGallery in Milan, Italy from Apr. 21 – May 3.
Kenneth Walker ’01 (B.A., dance) will stage the pas de deux from Light Rain by legendary choreographer and Joffrey Ballet co-founder Gerald Arpino at Alvas Showroom in San Pedro on May 15 at 2 p.m.
You Wu ’15 (B.A., architectural studies) has created Plastic Up!, an exhibition that brings new perspectives on plastics through the lens of design and contemporary art. The exhibition is presented at Kong Lab in Shenzhen, China through April.
Awards
Hsinming Fung ’80 (M.Arch. I) of hplusf design lab received the 2022 Tau Sigma Delta (TSD) Gold Medal in architecture with Craig Hodgetts, emeritus professor in the Department of Architecture and Urban Design.
Positions
Amy Hood ’03 (M.F.A., art) was appointed chief communications officer of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
David Molinaro ’12 (M.Arch. I) was elected president of the Orange County chapter of The American Institute of Architects (AIA), after serving on the board of directors for several years. Molinaro is senior project manager of Taylor Design, an architecture firm specializing in healthcare architecture.
CedarBough Saeji ’12 (Ph.D, culture and performance), assistant professor at Pusan National University, was recently appointed co-editor for the Asian Dance Journal (adj.or.kr) and is interested in receiving submissions from other UCLA alumni pertaining to dance in Asia, or Asian dance outside Asia.
Projects
Farooq Ameen ’89 (M.Arch. I) recently collaborated with Kenneth Frampton and Ken Yeang on deCoding Asian Urbanism, resulting in an exhibition on view at Helms through March 12, recently reviewed in Metropolis. Farooq is Founding Principal of LA-based City Design Studio, and a member of the Board of Directors of the A+D>Architecture and Design Museum in Los Angeles.
Refik Anadol ’14 (M.F.A., media arts) created a series of limited edition non-fungible token (NFT) art pieces based on data gathered from experiments on the effects of space travel on the human body. Anadol is also referenced in a New Yorker article about the rise of tech-centric, projection-based art exhibits.
Jonathan Bobrow ’08 (B.A., design media arts) is founder of the game company Move38 and has launched a Kickstarter campaign for Blinks, billed as the world’s first smart tabletop game system.
Aaron Casillas ’96 (B.A., art) launched “PokerGO Holdem,” a social poker game, in February, and taught in the USC game design program in 2019.
Giovanna Dan ’16 (B.A., dance) is the artistic director and choreographer—with her dance partner Guillermo De Fazio—of Tango Argentina, a show produced by Columbia Artists that is touring the United States with a full cast of dancers and musicians.
Jennifer Friedman ’08 (B.A., art) is a visual effects artist who worked on the TV shows WandaVision and Hawkeye, and who helps visualize and map out scenes in TV and film that require heavy visual effects.
Maren Hassinger ’73 (M.F.A., art) and Brenna Youngblood ’06 (M.F.A., art) will create outdoor art installations for Destination Crenshaw, a $100 million revitalization project that will bring public art, pocket parks, and small business investment to 1.3 miles of Crenshaw Boulevard in South Los Angeles.
Immersive interactive installation InkRiver by Seph Li. Produced by Nillab. Permanent installation at the Wine Capital Culture Park in Suqian, Jiangsu Province, China.
Seph Li ’12 (M.F.A., media arts) has designed InkRiver, a permanent interactive immersive installation at the Wine Capital Culture Park in Suqian, Jiangsu Province, China. It immerses visitors into an ink world while a flowing river visualizes emotions from ancient Chinese poems that have connections with wine culture.
Zakkariah Marquez ’15 (B.A., world arts and cultures) is the communications officer for #GenEndIt (Generation to End HIV), a movement with the goal of eradicating HIV/AIDS by 2030. The effort is supported by UNAIDS and a coalition of high level stakeholders.
Olivia Mole ’19 (M.F.A., art) is an artist with work in the group show Lifes at the Hammer Museum, on view through May 8, and was commissioned to create the marketing materials for the show.
Fei Mui ’14 (M.Arch. I) is curating the 2022 Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture in Hong Kong from August to November, and is looking for proposals to the biennale that respond to the theme “Seeds of Resilience.” The deadline for submissions is Apr. 4.
Dominique Navarro ’03 (B.A., art) is curator and founder of Luxor Art Gallery since 2018. Located in Egypt across from the ancient Egyptian monuments the Colossi of Memnon, Luxor Art Gallery is dedicated to promoting local contemporary fine art and Egypt’s extraordinary artists.
Diana Nawi ’06 (B.A., art) will co-curate Made In LA 2023 at the Hammer Museum.
Alexandra Nechita ’17 (B.A., art) partnered with The Hollywood Partnership and Arts Bridging the Gap in 2021 to create the mural Set The Stage in Hollywood. Nechita also donated Love Anatomy, a nine-foot-tall bronze sculpture, to the city of Beverly Hills that sits on the corner of Rexford Dr. and Burton Way.
taisha paggett ’08 (M.F.A., choreographic inquiry) has organized Soliloquy Sundays: A Series of Black Sound, a series of Sunday sound sessions online with sound offerings from local-global luminaries in the U.S. and Canada.
Haejin Suh ’20 (B.A., design media arts) is the marketing lead for Spill the Beans, a platform where career professionals share honest and genuine stories on how they came to work in their field, career tips, and advice. It’s run by UCLA alumni, including creator Grace H. Park, UI/UX lead Issac Park, and design lead Kaylin Park.
Elaine Sullivan ’20 (Ph.D., culture and performance) is the co-curator with Erica Jones of Gosette Lubondo: Imaginary Trip at the Fowler Museum through Jul. 3.
Publications
Zach Blas ’08 (M.F.A., media arts) has published an artist monograph, Unknown Ideals, with Sternberg Press.
Cory Buckner ’00 (M.Arch. II) has published A Cambridge Modernist: The Architecture of David Wyn Roberts.
Christina Moushoul ’18 (B.A., architectural studies) co-edited Party Planner, an annual architecture and design publication that explores the relationship between design and alternative social spaces.
Sangita Shresthova ’08 (Ph.D., culture and performance) co-edited Transformative Media Pedagogies, which offers insights and strategies for implementing transformative media pedagogies across learning environments and civic ecosystems.
Craig Marshall Smith ’69 (B.A, art) and ’73 (M.F.A., art) published Twenty-Six Dachshunds: An Alphabet Book. Each of the 26 dachshunds (drawings, paintings, collages, photographs, digital images) is named after a visual artist, architect, writer, dancer, actor, film director, musician, crossword puzzle creator, or hand puppet.
Kristina Wong ’00 (B.A., world arts and cultures) wrote the foreword to the book The Auntie Sewing Squad Guide to Mask Making, Radical Care, and Racial Justice. This anthology documents the rise of the Auntie Sewing Squad, a massive mutual-aid network of volunteers which provided free masks during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Amir Zaki ’99 (M.F.A., art) is the author of the photography book Building + Becoming, co-published by X Artists' Books and DoppelHouse Press.
HEADER IMAGE: Eamon Ore-Giron, Cookin’ 2, 2002. Latex acrylic on canvas, 36 x 48 inches. Collection of Daniel Sakaguchi and Jennifer Kapczynski, Berkeley, CA. Photo: Glen Cheriton, Impart Photography
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