Art has a responsibility to critique our ever changing and evolving world. Through a fusion of historical knowledge with contemporary analysis, artists both reflect on current challenges and envision a hopeful speculative future. The last year has delivered unparalleled challenges as well as inspiration to respond to them. The graduating students from the University of California, San Diego Department of Visual Arts graduate program have endured a time of video conferencing, stay-at-home orders, and limited access to campus facilities. In terms of making art, this is not ideal. However, they have overcome these obstacles to produce an outstanding selection of works that will be displayed at the San Diego Art Institute (SDAI) this April and May.

Founded on the principle that the production, critical analysis and history of art are inter-related activities, the UC San Diego Department of Visual Arts offers graduate programs in both art practice and art history. Students are encouraged to collaborate with each other and to work across various disciplines to produce innovative art and research that reflects and challenges current ideas and practices. Our location in San Diego and our proximity to the US border with Mexico as well as the natural resources of the Southern California region have a lasting impact on student experience. MFA students have opportunities to work closely with UC San Diego faculty who hail from vastly different backgrounds, disciplines and paradigms of art practice and scholarship. During their graduate studies students develop and present their work in exhibitions and events on campus as well as at local, national and international venues, culminating in an MFA thesis show.

The role and responsibility of the public institution to support these artists requires providing a platform for their professional and creative growth. This year’s MFA presentation inaugurates a new and exciting collaboration between Lux Art Institute and UC San Diego to illustrate the adventurous and groundbreaking artwork that is being created in the region. Through their institutional prowess, Lux has united with the San Diego Art Institute to bring experimental contemporary art from northern Baja in Mexico and San Diego beyond our region. This endeavor will culminate in their union as the Institute of Contemporary Art, San Diego, launching in September 2021. It is with mutual support that these storied institutions drive the future of contemporary art globally.

Over the last few months, Lux curators have met individually with each artist to learn more about their work, provide critique, and help select works that are most emblematic of their oeuvre. During the course of the exhibition, artists will be provided with an opportunity to present and speak about their process to the public, promoting the sharing of knowledge and their practice while also allowing them to step up to the podium, preparing them for years of future presentations. Through the broad local and national reach that SDAI provides, these artists will now be seen by the world.

Through a confluence of events in 2020 and bleeding into 2021: a pandemic, social justice reckoning, severe environmental degradation, and local, national and global political strife, just to name a few, there is no lack of subjectivity that these artists have had to face. And they have done so strenuously with an investigative and enlightened perspective. Their work takes on both new and traditional mediums to explore our inhabited space, the environment, multi-cultural histories, gender and sexual identity, and the state of the human condition – all issues that address both the upheaval and positive future that our world holds before us. At this moment in the pandemic, there is a broad positive outlook on the year ahead. It is also an apt time for these students to present work to the public that has been reflective of the previous year.

We are excited to share with you the MFA Thesis Exhibition of the 2021 UC San Diego Department of Visual Arts graduating class in an expansive physical exhibition in San Diego’s Balboa Park.

– Andrew Utt & Amy Adler

Andrew Utt

Executive Director

Lux Art Institute

Institute of Contemporary Art, San Diego

Amy Adler

Professor & Chair

Department of Visual Arts, UC San Diego