From digital data and technology to the environment, healthcare and the body, graduate students from across the College of Letters and Science at University of California, Davis, are pushing boundaries with their experimental research and creative expression. The results, varied in medium and discipline, will be on display at the Arts & Humanities 2026 Graduate Exhibition.
The multidisciplinary showcase runs June 4–20 at the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art. The opening night reception on June 4, 5:30 to 9 p.m., is free and open to the public. Five student presentations and performances are scheduled.
Four awards will be presented, including three art purchase prizes. In all, 20 Master of Fine Arts, Master of Arts and doctoral students are participating.
Exhibit opening night Thursday, June 4
- 5:30 to 9 p.m., Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, free and open to the public.
- Five student presentations and performances are scheduled.
“Our graduate students are on the cutting edge of technology, design and the arts,” said Estella Atekwana, dean of the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis. “They create their own techniques and technologies while thinking deeply and critically about everything they do. Now more than ever, we need future leaders like these, who engage across disciplines and media to meet the challenges of our rapidly changing world.”
Museum visitors can expect to encounter multimedia exhibits, installations, sculpture, paintings, drawings and collage as well as performances that will encourage them to engage with art and design in new ways.
“It’s a joy to celebrate UC Davis’ dedicated, talented and amazing arts graduate students with this annual exhibition,” said Rachel Teagle, the museum’s founding director. “We’re especially excited to increase the number of M.F.A. students’ work represented in the Fine Arts Collection with the support of the College of Letters and Science Dean’s Office.”
Levi Keatts (M.F.A., art studio) explores the arbitrary, moralized boundaries between what is considered “natural” or “unnatural,” particularly with regards to queerness with paintings and mixed-media works on display in the Arts & Humanities 2026 Graduate Exhibition. (Courtesy of the artist)
A sampling of what the public will see and experience:
Zahra Baxi (M.F.A., design) focuses on making complex systems accessible and engaging through data visualization and media. Using interactive mapping and visual design to reveal seasonal change and interconnected environmental processes, Baxi explores the Yolo Basin as a dynamic system shaped by flood, migration and agriculture.
Rafael Bertacini (M.F.A., design) explores how complex human experiences can be made tangible and legible through objects and interactions. In this work, Bertacini investigates a multi-site wearable to support emotional regulation in neurodivergent adults living with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and autism spectrum disorder.
Nick Block (M.F.A., art studio) engages with computer systems to investigate how digital data flows transform our physical landscape and lives. His installation pairs “breathing” 3D-printed grids with a disintegrating photographic cave to explore machine sentience and embodied experience within a hybrid digital-physical reality.
Tara K. Daly (M.F.A., art studio) engages symmetry as a compositional tool to speak about interconnectedness and entanglements. Her sculptural looms hold a variety of ways to interlace diverse kinds of materials into structured wholes that propose an ontology in which knowledge and being might emerge through interwoven, relational processes.
Elieza Delaney-Lewis (M.F.A., design), guided by bodily awareness, examines Western birthing spaces as systems shaping power, movement and care, and proposes womb-inspired architectural models that foster autonomy, reciprocity, relational trust and ecological approaches to health and design.
Davion Mack (M.F.A., art studio), through sculpture, explores how matter moves through geological and cosmic time. His current body of work centers on steel forms cradling geological matter, emphasizing gravity, care and balance while revealing memories contained in stones from various California landscapes.
Nidhi Mittal (M.F.A., design), focusing on issues of equity and representation in women’s health, examines how experiences of perimenopause are shared and understood within digital communities, translating user-generated discussions into quantitative insights to inform more human-centered digital health design.
Sean Olmstead (M.F.A. art studio) draws on humor, anxiety and absurdity to explore our relationship with technology and electronic media. His gallery and performance works re-imagine technology systems and media landscapes, conjuring natural and artificial processes and dynamics with sound, video and installation. He will also perform on opening night.
Erika Tsimbrovsky (Ph.D. performance studies) will share an intimate performance at the opening shaped by movement, voice, silence and simple materials. Drawing from her Living Open Diary research, the work explores how writing becomes choreography and how language unfolds as gesture, trace and relation.
Elmira M Sultan Rashid (Ph.D., performance studies) will present a performance developed through a decade-long collaboration with Iranian artist Samira Danesh at the June 4 opening. The video component (2023) draws on women’s magical practices in the Epic of Gilgamesh.(Courtesy of the artist).
Four Awards Announced at Opening; Colloquium June 5
The winners of the LeShelle & Gary May Art Purchase Prize, the Keister & Allen Art Purchase Prize, the Letters & Science Prize for Excellence, and the Savageau Award in the Department of Design will be announced at the June 4 opening celebration. The first three prizes enable the Manetti Shrem Museum to purchase graduate student work for the university’s Fine Arts Collection, and the Savageau Award recognizes and furthers the careers of a graduate in design. Art history graduate students will present their research at the Annual Art History Graduate Colloquium and Reception from 2 to 5 p.m. on June 5 at Everson Hall.
The Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art is located at 254 Old Davis Road. Public hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday through Sunday. Visit manettishrem.org for information.
