Faculty Spotlight: Fall 2024
The creative and scholarly contributions of the UCLA Arts community mine the complexities of the human condition, ask essential questions of our time, and expand the potential of creativity. Read more for a list of recent accolades; current and upcoming exhibitions, events, and performances; and the announcement of the first museum of AI arts.
Publications
“Gateway to a Landless Workers Movement encampment in Brazil,” 2008. (Alex Ungprateeb Flynn)
Alex Ungprateeb Flynn, associate professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, edited the forthcoming book Forty Years of the Landless Workers Movement: Landless Perspectives. The Landless Workers Movement (MST) is the largest social movement in Latin America with over 1.5 million members and has been fighting for agrarian reform since 1984. The movement has secured land for over 350,000 families and become a worldwide beacon for progressive politics. The book connects lived experiences with wider political questions pertaining to global mass mobilization. Available for pre-order now, and available for purchase Monday, November 18, 2025.
Lauren Lee McCarthy M.F.A. ‘11, professor in and alumna of the Department of Design Media Arts, recently released the book Surrogate, based on a pregnancy journal, which charts the progress of a performance project over the course of fifty-two weeks. McCarthy offers her body to carry someone else’s baby while they monitor and control her with an app. For nine months they decide what she eats, what she does, what thoughts she meditates on — holding complete control over the body in which their baby is growing. As Roe v. Wade is overturned and gene editing opens entirely new reproductive futures, this project asks: How much control should we have over a birthing person’s body, and over a life before it begins?
Wendy Sung, assistant professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, wrote the article Afterlife and Reclamation: Rodney King, Black Trauma, and the Televisual Archive of Self in Celebrity Rehab. It was recently published in The Journal of Cinema and Media Studies. The article explores King's affective labor, the temporal recursivities of Black trauma, and the crafting of a televisual archive of self on reality television.
Exhibitions, Events, and Performances
Margin For Error. Installation view, Gameplayarts. (Chris Hanke)
Eunice Choi M.F.A. '23, lecturer in and alumna of the Department of Design Media Arts, had a solo exhibition, Margin For Error, at Gameplayarts, an arts organization dedicated to advancing game-based arts and culture. In Margin For Error, Choi invites viewers to embrace the uncomfortable space between balance and collapse. This exhibition marks Choi's second iteration of exploring off-balance states, confusion, and the in-between. Drawing from her interest and background in sculpture and design objects, Choi creates distorted measuring tools and interactive installations as poignant metaphors for emotional states and personal struggles.
Dan Froot, professor emeritus in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, and his company present Arms Around America at the UCLA Nimoy Theater on Nov. 15 and 16. Arms Around America is a community-based theater project investigating how Americans experience fear, power, identity, loss, and love through our relationships with guns. This world premiere performance is staged as a live radio-theater broadcast.
Elliott Hundley M.F.A. ‘05, visiting assistant professor in and alumnus of the Department of Art, had a work, Balcony, on view as part of a selection of new acquisitions at Museo Jumex in Mexico City. The work was first exhibited as part of Prospect: 5 in New Orleans in 2022.
A photo of Krajnak during her durational performance, Clearing Winter Storm. (Courtesy of the artist)
Tarrah Krajnak, associate professor in the Department of Art, exhibited a new work, Clearing Winter Storm, a 12 hour durational performance for OFFSCREEN Paris from Oct. 16–20. Krajnak will also exhibit new work at Paris Photo with Zander Galerie in November.
Chandler McWilliams, assistant professor in the Department of Design Media Arts, co-curated the exhibition Conscious Tether: Art and the Internet in Los Angeles. Part of Getty’s region-wide initiative PST ART: Art & Science Collide, the exhibition was on view at Human Resources Los Angeles. Conscious Tether invited artists from across Los Angeles to consider what it means to live with and through the internet, while acknowledging how this technology often masks its use of matter, energy, and labor.
Still image of Any-Instant-Whatever, 2020. (Courtesy of the artist)
Rebeca Méndez, professor in the Department of Design Media Arts, is included in the Huntington Library exhibition Storm Cloud: Picturing the Origins of Our Climate Crisis, part of Getty’s region-wide initiative PST ART: Art & Science Collide. The exhibition concludes with Méndez’s Any-Instant-Whatever (2020), a video projection that was recorded on a roof in L.A. from dawn to dusk on a single January day. Storm Cloud is on view through Jan. 6, 2025. Méndez is also included in the PST ART exhibition Digital Witness: Revolutions in Design, Photography, and Film at the Los Angeles County Art Museum (LACMA). The exhibition examines the impact of digital manipulation tools from the 1980s to the present. Digital Witness opens Nov. 24 and will be on view through July 13, 2025.
#33, 2024. Installation view, Trautwein Herleth. (Courtesy of Trautwein Herleth)
Rebecca Morris, professor in the Department of Art, had a solo exhibition at Trautwein Herleth entitled #33. The artist's 33rd solo outing, as the show's title alludes, comprises a group of six new, heterogeneous-but-related, oil-on-canvas, large-scale abstractions. The works revel in Morris' sumptuous tonality, ranging from dirty pastel to metallic; their jazz compositions veering or riffing off wayward grids, patchwork, visually satisfying impasto, and fuzzy edges.
Will Rawls, associate professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, presented two stop-motion short films Alpha Dance (2018) and Sister Spell (2018) at Human Resources Los Angeles as part of the group show There is almost not an interval. A new work by Rawls, Parable of the Guest, will premiere Dec. 13-15 in New York City. The work is commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art as part of their Edges of Ailey exhibition.
Casey Reas, professor in the Department of Design Media Arts, recently had a solo exhibition, entitled Operational, yet Oneiric, at MUD Gallery in Shanghai, China. Reas is also included in the group exhibition Digital Witness: Revolutions in Design, Photography, and Film at LACMA. Part of Getty’s region-wide initiative PST ART: Art & Science Collide, Digital Witness opens on Nov. 24 and is on view through July 13, 2025. Reas’ work can also be seen in Electric Op at New York’s Buffalo AKG Art Museum.
Peter Sellars, center, sets Jorie Graham’s poetry to music with a chamber group of instruments and electronics, as well as five vocalists. (Meridith Kohut / The New York Times)
Peter Sellars, distinguished professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, directed a major new work, Music for New Bodies, from American Modern Opera Company co-founder and composer Matthew Aucoin. The work is brought to life by five vocal soloists and an 18-instrument ensemble conducted by Aucoin. Music for New Bodies is inspired by the visionary poetry of Jorie Graham, addressing some of the most urgent questions of our time: In our quest for immortality, what have human beings done to the planet, and what are we doing to ourselves? Sellars is also directing a new production at Paris Opera entitled Castor et Pollux.
Victoria Vesna, professor in the Department of Design Media Arts, and Anuradha Vikram, lecturer in the Department of Art, curated the exhibition Atmosphere of Sound: Sonic Art in Times of Climate Disruption. Part of Getty’s region-wide initiative PST ART: Art & Science Collide, Atmosphere of Sound is a seven-exhibition program presented by the UCLA Art|Sci Center that runs through June 7, 2025, and takes the unique approach of combining sound art and science to engage audiences in deep reflection on climate-related issues.
Awards and Recognition
JK3D’s Cactus Homes project received an honorable mention in ICON’s Phase II of their Initiative 99 competition. (JK3D)
Julia Koerner, associate adjunct professor in the Department of Architecture and Urban Design, is the founder of JK3D, which is focused on iconic, sustainable, and innovative 3D-printed fashion and home decor products. In May of 2023, ICON kicked off Phase I of Initiative 99 calling upon students, designers, and architects from around the world to help us address the global housing crisis by designing homes that could be built for $99,000 or less. JK3D received an honorable mention as part of the Phase II of this architecture competition for their Cactus Homes project.
Tarrah Krajnak, associate professor in the Department of Art, was one of four international artists shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2025. This long-standing annual Prize, originally established in 1996, identifies and rewards artists for their projects that have made a significant contribution to photography over the previous 12 months. Over its 28-year history, the Prize has become renowned as one of the most important international awards for contemporary photographers, spotlighting outstanding, innovative, and thought-provoking work.
Lauren Lee McCarthy M.F.A. ‘11, professor in and alumna of the Department of Design Media Arts, is the first recipient of the Human AI Art Award. This award is a joint initiative by Kunstmuseum Bonn and Deutsche Telekom and honors outstanding artistic performance at the interface between the visual arts and technology — particularly artificial intelligence.
Rebecca Morris, professor in the Department of Art, is a 2024 recipient of a Joan Mitchell Fellowship. These 15 artists from across the United States will each receive $60,000 in unrestricted funds, distributed over five years. The multi-year financial support is interwoven with regular opportunities for skills development, peer exchange, and network building — all critical resources that artists need to sustain their practices.
First AI Art Museum
Refik Anadol and Efsun Erkiliç, the founders of Refik Anadol Studio, in downtown Los Angeles where Dataland is set open in 2025. (Dustin Downing)
Refik Anadol M.F.A. ‘14, lecturer in and alumnus of the Department of Design Media Arts, announced he will open the world’s first museum of AI arts called Dataland. “We are blending Gehry’s building with AI’s infrastructure and technology, and this never-seen-before art form,” Anadol told the Los Angeles Times during an interview on the 31st floor of the Grand’s residential tower, which has a bird’s-eye view of Disney Hall. “And I’m calling this new art form not AR, not VR, not XR — so we are still finding a name for it. The best name so far, and people love it, is generative reality.”
Header image: Dan Froot & Company will present Arms Around America at the UCLA Nimoy Theater on Nov. 15 and 16. (Rose Eichenbaum)
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