Faculty Spotlight: Spring 2025
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, exhibitions, performances, publications, special projects, and more.
Publications
The cover for Alex Ungprateeb Flynn's upcoming monograph, Pathways to Utopia.
Alex Ungprateeb Flynn, associate professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, will publish his second monograph, Pathways to Utopia: Time and Transformation in the Landless Workers Movement of Brazil, this August from Indiana University Press. Pathways to Utopia explores how Brazil's Landless Workers Movement, against all odds, has endured for forty years as one of the world's largest social movements.
Heather Roberge, professor in the Department of Architecture and Urban Design, published a new book, Fabricating Plasticity in Aluminum, from Routledge. This book argues for the value of the material prototype as a critical site of design innovation, through a series of design and architectural case studies. Illustrated by physical objects such as chairs, columns, and building façades, these full-scale material investigations reflect their designers’ deep knowledge of material, manufacturing, and geometry.
Cauleen Smith, professor in the Department of Art, is the subject of the book Cauleen Smith: Breaking Cinema. Experimental Film 2010–2023 by Romi Crawford. Operating in multiple materials and arenas, Smith roots her work firmly within the discourse of mid-twentieth-century experimental film. This book adds to the growing scholarship on Smith’s work, as art historian Crawford elucidates a critical phase of the artist’s career and how Smith recasts film history in the context of the artistic and cultural ferment of Chicago’s South Side.
Exhibitions, Events, and Performances
Installation view of Refik Anadol's Living Architecture: Gehry. (Guggenheim Bilbao)
Refik Anadol M.F.A. ‘14, alum and lecturer in the Department of Design Media Arts, debuted Living Architecture: Gehry, the first exhibition in the Guggenheim Bilbao’s new In situ series. Living Architecture: Gehry pays homage to the iconic architecture of Frank Gehry by using Artificial intelligence to reinterpret his archive into a new data universe of AI-generated visuals exploring the relationship between architecture and data. The exhibition is on view through Oct. 19, 2025. Anadol also presented at the Museums of Tomorrow Roundtable 2025, a gathering of international and local museum leaders in the Bay Area for dialogue on the complex challenges and opportunities museums face in an era of rapid technological advancement. Anadol presentated on AI and art in “Future-Proofing the Museum.”
Alex Ungprateeb Flynn co-curated the latest Fowler exhibition Construction, Occupation, which features the work of 24 artists and collectives exploring art’s potential to shape the city through the power of community. Drawing on myriad visual languages and poetics grounded in collective action, the exhibition investigates a radical urban vocabulary that blurs art and activism to address questions of infrastructure and vulnerability, circulation and segregation, and the body in public space. Construction, Occupation is on view through Jan. 11, 2026.
Andrea Fraser’s This meeting is being recorded, 2021. Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery. (Alex Yudzon)
Andrea Fraser, professor in the Department of Art, has a retrospective exhibition, Art Must Hang, currently on view at the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, showcasing 40 years of her career. The exhibition spans works from the late 1980s to today, including films, texts, and documentation of her critical exploration of art’s relationship with institutions and audiences. Fraser was also recently interviewed by the Observer: “I sometimes say everything was performance or I don’t believe in fiction.”
Miguel Gutierrez, associate professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, premiered his new dance performance Super Nothing to rave reviews from the New York Times, BOMB Magazine, and more. The evening-length performance explores the intersections between art and life, featuring a diverse ensemble of performers from New York and Los Angeles. Super Nothing came to On the Boards in Seattle on May 1–3 and will come to UCLA’s Freud Playhouse from UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance on June 13 and 14, 2025.
Installation view of Boren Banner Series: Tarrah Krajnak at the Frye Art Museum (Jueqian Fang / Frye Art Museum)
Tarrah Krajnak, associate professor in the Department of Art, opened an exhibition of new work, titled Body Configurations (Lima), at the Frye Museum of Art in Seattle. Known for work that blends photography, performance, and poetry, Krajnak uses her body to reimagine and respond to iconic moments in photographic history and to challenge traditions of Western art history. Body Configurations (Lima) is on view through Oct. 5, 2025. Her work is also included in the ongoing group exhibition, Around Group f.64: Legacies and Counterhistories in Bay Area Photography, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), closing July 13, 2025. Her work will also be included in the forthcoming exhibition, The Rose, at the Center for Photography at Woodstock. The Rose opens on May 24 and will be on view through Aug. 31, 2025.
Chandler McWilliams, professor in the Department of Design Media Arts, and Conditional Studio presented the symposium Thinking Through Textiles: Future Pedagogies at Broad Art Center on Friday, Feb. 21. The symposium explored the intersections of aesthetics, textile technique, cross-disciplinary studies, and new material insights. The event featured faculty members Julia Koerner and Romi Morrison and Fowler curator Syona Puliady.
Installation view of Will Rawls: [siccer] at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (Jeff McLane / ICA LA)
Will Rawls, associate professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, has an exhibition currently on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICA LA). Rawl’s [siccer] is part immersive installation, part live performance that uses dance, photography, animation, and sound to investigate the role of media in constructing, exploiting, and erasing the Black body. The exhibition is on view through Aug. 31, 2025.
David Roussève, distinguished professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, will premiere his first evening-length solo in more than 20 years, Daddy AF, at the Kelly Strayhorn Theater in Pittsburgh this September. Daddy AF is a meditation on life's purpose created and performed by a queer African American man acutely aware of the finite time he has left on the planet. Roussève will also deliver the 2025 UCLA Arts commencement address on Saturday, June 14.
Cauleen Smith premiered The Volcano Manifesto at Doc Fortnight 2025 at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Presented as a trilogy for the first time, Smith’s The Volcano Manifesto brings together three recent films—My Caldera (2022), Mines to Caves (2023), and The Deep West Assembly (2024). Smith is also included in the Hammer Museum at UCLA exhibition Alice Coltrane, Monument Eternal, which is inspired by the life and legacy of jazz musician, devotional leader, and mother Alice Coltrane.
Photo of Camilla Taylor's Change. (Track 16)
Camilla Taylor, lecturer in the Department of Art, curated the group exhibition, My House Burned Down, featuring artists who have lost their home to fire both in the recent Los Angeles fires and in the past. The exhibition will be on view through June 28, 2025, at Track 16’s downtown Los Angeles location. On June 7, at 3 p.m., Track 16 will host a special artist panel.
Jason Tsou, lecturer in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, and his Northern Star Dance Company—a collective of dancers and martial artists—performed Polaris at Highways Performance Space and Gallery in Santa Monica on March 7 and 8. Blending ancient philosophy with contemporary performance, Polaris expands the discipline of kung fu into a luminous, living archive. The piece explores how martial arts—passed down from body to body—are both transformed by and transformative to each new generation.
Victoria Vesna, professor in the Department of Design Media Arts, and the Art|Sci Center presented Sound + Science 3.0, the third installment of its trailblazing symposium series, following earlier editions in 2009 and 2019. Taking place on May 1–2, the symposium included performances and lectures, hosted across three UCLA locations: the Fowler Museum, the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI), and the UCLA Botanical Garden. Sound + Science 3.0 was presented in conjunction with the Art|Sci Center’s 20th anniversary and its exhibition Atmosphere of Sound: Sonic Arts in Times of Climate Disruption, part of Getty’s region-wide initiative, PST ART: Art & Science Collide.
Awards, Residencies, and Fellowships
Kutan Ayata, associate professor in the Department of Architecture and Urban Design, and his practice Young & Ayata is one of five recipients of the American Academy of Arts and Letters’s 2025 Awards in Architecture. Arts and Letters’s annual architecture awards program began in 1955 with the inauguration of the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize and has since expanded to include four Arts and Letters Awards. Young & Ayata joins Andrés Jaque, Neri&Hu, and Mark Wigley among this year's Arts and Letters Awards honorees.
Andrea Fraser won a 2025–26 Rome Prize. This rigorous competition supports innovative fellows in the arts, humanities, and sciences. The Rome Prize equips artists and scholars with the time, space, setting, and colleagues to explore and create in the singular city of Rome. The thirty-five recipients will reside at the Academy’s eleven-acre grounds in Rome for five to ten months, starting this September.
Tarrah Krajnak was recently awarded a fellowship at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. Each year, the Wissenschaftskolleg invites about 40 Fellows and Short-term Fellows. The Wissenschaftskolleg extends invitations to persons from all fields and disciplines. Each year we host scholars from the humanities, the social sciences and life sciences along with individuals from the arts (musicians, composers, artists, writers, etc.)
Jay Carlon, center, performs in Lionel Popkin’s Reorient the Orient.
Lionel Popkin, interim dean of UCLA Arts and professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, continues a residency at Dance Place in Washington, D.C. During this residency, Popkin developed Reorient the Orient, a multifaceted exploration blending performance, installation, and social critique. The final work will transform Dance Place’s theater, lobby, and studios, where community members are invited to explore freely, choosing their path and encounters.
Tria Blu Wakpa, assistant professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, received a 2025-2026 American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Fellowship. Over the past century, ACLS has supported individual scholars and scholarly teams around the world in their pursuit of research with the potential to advance knowledge in the humanities and interpretive social sciences.
Special Projects
Dana Cuff, professor in the Department of Architecture and Urban Design, and her research center, cityLAB, launched "Small Lots, Big Impacts," a first-of-its-kind initiative to turn vacant lots across L.A. into new starter homes. The initiative calls on architects and building experts to propose creative pilot projects on vacant, city-owned land, seeking winning designs for innovative, lower-cost housing. The initiative was covered by the Los Angeles Times, KCRW, and more.
Ayasha Guerin, assistant professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, has launched the Los Angeles iteration of her community-research studio, The Liberated Planet Studio. The Spring 2025 Artist Research cohort is meeting at various sites in and around L.A. to learn from local ecological-projects, landmarks, infrastructures, and their stewards. The program is an experiment of collective research praxis.
This parachute was designed by Gabriela Jimenez '08 and features the message: "Immigrant rights are human rights." (MuralColors)
Davida Persaud Ph.D. ’22, lecturer in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance and the Visual and Performing Arts Education Program (VAPAE), co-founded MuralColors along with Carlos Rogel and Samantha Magaña shortly after graduating from WACD. MuralColors recently partnered with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) and LA vs Hate to co-host an art build for the 2025 May Day March in Downtown Los Angeles. Together, they created a striking series of hand-painted parachutes, each designed by an LA-based artist and painted by volunteers. These vibrant artworks brought to life messages advocating for immigrant and worker rights. A coalition of workers and allies marched and danced for three miles with the parachutes.
Natsuo Tomita, lecturer in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, is developing Together Song, a multimedia performance that blends dance, acting, poetry, projections, lighting, and sound. Created as part of Tomita’s course in the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, the production is a loose retelling of Romeo and Juliet, tracing the story of two central characters as they meet, fall in love, and navigate the chaos of war. Together Song will premiere at the end of May outside Broad Art Center, featuring projections on the building’s exterior made possible by Christie Digital.
Cosmo Whyte, assistant professor in the Department of Art, served as a juror for the Congressional Art Competition presented by Congressman Ted Lieu of California's 36th District. Each spring, a nation-wide high school arts competition is sponsored by the Members of the U.S. House of Representatives. The Congressional Art Competition is an opportunity to recognize and encourage the artistic talent in the nation.
Header image: Miguel Gutierrez's Super Nothing comes to UCLA this June. (Amelia Golden)
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