CalArts’ Annual Postgraduate Exhibition
October 11–November 22, 2025
Los Angeles CA 90007
US
California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) is pleased to present Proxy, Chimera, Oracle, an exhibition featuring new works by nearly three-dozen artists, all recent graduates of the CalArts School of Art’s MFA programs. The exhibition is curated by critic, curator, and educator Nora N. Khan at CalArts at The Reef, CalArts’ new cultural platform and venue in Downtown Los Angeles.
Proxy, Chimera, Oracle includes sculptures, films, paintings, and a range of hybrid mixed-media works, many of which take up afterimages as material. A bright light, prolonged exposure: An afterimage is the lingering visual after overstimulation of the eye. A visual sensation lingers though the source has been removed: the memory of a structure, a presence, taking form as imprints, traces, shadows, and blur. The exhibition presents aesthetic and imaginal strategies for living in the wake, after homes, communal spaces, safe havens, and any semblance of certainty have been evacuated.
At first, we see loss and absence: Grooves in concrete where an LA shopping plaza once stood. Faded billboards on the highway. Signs with their letters ripped out and rearranged. Thresholds of houses in the last village of its kind. Scaffolding without support.
Collectively, these artworks respond to personal and systemic losses and thefts, psychic debts, enclosures and narrow framings through strategic redirection. The artists use proxies to buy time or stretch feeling and memory: body doubles, rehearsal architectures, floor maps of ruins, protocols, branded limbs, scores in ash and smoke, hair stitched through skin and watched on screen. They chart paths out of grief and loss by staging chimeric transmutation: alien embryos, molted snakeskin braids, invented mythological icons, suspended slime and chocolate and water. Religious figures are pulled apart and put back together again.
Finally, and perhaps most optimistically, they invent oracles and predictive models, forecast future chaos to warn the present, score performances that should be, and divine through algorithmic augury and games without ends in sight.
Across two weekends—October 18–19 and November 8–9—CalArts presents a slate of public programs at The Reef organized by curatorial researcher Erica Min (Critical Studies MA 25). Events include artist talks, performances, readings, curatorial walkthroughs, and more. The weekends will also include poetic oracular interventions by CalArts faculty members Carribean Fragoza, Muriel Leung, Matias Viegener, Brian Evenson, Gabrielle Civil, Kini Sosa (Critical Studies MFA 24), and Rowland Smith III (Critical Studies MFA 24), and chimerical sounds by Stanley Zappa (Critical Studies MA 25).
A complementary exhibition publication was edited by Khan and Min, designed by Becca Lofchie (Art MFA 20), with the support of current Reef residents Valeria Costa (Art MFA 25) and Ingrid Yu-Ju Tai (Art MFA 25).
The annual CalArts postgraduate show is intended to provide context and visibility for recent graduates, as well as an opportunity to connect and share their work with the larger art community. Previous iterations of the exhibition have been organized by Malik Gaines, Meghan Gordon, Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer, Andrew McNeely, Audrey Min, Catherine Taft, and Aurora Tang, among other notable curators.
Participating artists: Adriana DiNapoli, Aimee Sorek, AJaeCea Carlie x Luisa Pinzon, Alexandra Pasquale, Anatola Araba, Catherine Wang, Chinning Liu, Dar San Agustin, Erika Keck, Hengyu Wang, Ione Wang, Jade Smrz, Jake Thornton, Zengjie Chai, Jayson Mittman, Jeffrey Martín, Kiko Thomas, Masha Sheinina, Mei Gong, Meixi Liu, Michele Lorusso, Pedro Alejandro Verdin, Raymond Ren, Rica Kagawa, Rocky Hayden, Sining Zhu, Siqi Fan, Siyona Ravi, Smonica (Si Ming) Lin, Sophia Le Fraga, Taylor Thomas, Ti lee, Yanying Zhu, Yulya Valuy x Dasha Avdeeva, Yuqiao Zhang.
California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) has set the pace for educating professional artists since 1970. Offering rigorous undergraduate and graduate degree programs through six schools—Art, Critical Studies, Dance, Film/Video, Music, and Theater—CalArts champions creative excellence, critical reflection, and the development of new forms and expressions. As successive generations of faculty and alumni have helped shape the landscape of contemporary arts, the Institute first envisioned by Walt Disney encompasses a vibrant, eclectic community with global reach, inviting experimentation, independent inquiry, and active collaboration and exchange among artists, artistic disciplines, and cultural traditions.
CalArts at The Reef is the Institute’s exciting new 20,000-square foot arts and studio space in Downtown Los Angeles. Housed within The Reef, a creative hub at the corner of Broadway and Washington, it provides CalArts students and alumni the opportunity to immerse themselves in Los Angeles’ vibrant art scene. Offering space for exhibitions, symposia, events, and readings as well as proximity to other artists, designers, and cultural organizations, CalArts’ presence within the building’s maker community aims to give CalArtians a wider context in which to collaborate and share their work. At the center of CalArts programming is CalArts Reef Residency, which provides time, space, and support for recently graduated CalArts alumni to develop their work beyond the academic environment.
