MICA Grad Show 2026

MICA Grad Show 2026 showcases the work of MFA and MA students across 14 internationally renowned graduate programs, unfolding February through July. Join us for a season of ground-breaking exhibitions, presentations, public programs and student-curated installations throughout Baltimore City. These innovative and inspiring events and exhibitions feature the next generation of creative thinkers—artists, designers, filmmakers, educators and curators—as they demonstrate the power and possibility of contemporary art and design. The full schedule of events can be found here.

Each cohort presents a culminating body of studio work and projects. Grad Show I spotlights the nationally recognized Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program and its integration of personal artistry and art education. Grad Show II emphasizes experimentation in typography, graphic design, and illustration. Grad Show III features work across many disciplines including painting, sculpture, photography and film, as well as programs like Community Arts, MFA and Social Design, MA. Grad Show IV showcases the student work of the Studio Art, MFA program whose art harnesses the power to disrupt, awaken, and inspire.

Featured among the exhibitions are students whose practices span community collaboration, cultural reclamation, political critique, and intimate storytelling. For his thesis exhibition, Photography + Media & Society, MFA student Shaun Stephenson created Aynos Records, a community-centered archival project amplifying the voices of women and children affected by incarceration. In pressed vinyl recordings with professionally designed album covers, the project centers on the personal writing and creative storytelling from participants, including Stephenson’s mother who is currently incarcerated. Rather than positioning incarcerated individuals as subjects of documentation, Stephenson works alongside them as collaborators and co-authors, honoring their lived experiences and pushing back against simplified narratives of the carceral system.

Understanding the present and imagining the future often requires working through the past. Rinehart School of Sculpture, MFA student Hannah Atallah draws on traditional Arabic art forms such as marquetry, mosaics, carpet making, and tatreez, applying them to unexpected materials including recycled skateboards, bank notes, acrylic yarn, and bleach. Her objects, installations, and performances reclaim imagery tied to Arab histories and confront cultural assumptions. In a recent exhibition, Atallah created an immersive majlis featuring hand-tufted landscapes, embroidered banners, and layered audio, offering space for communal gathering amid displacement and historical erasure. 

Mount Royal School of Multidisciplinary Art, MFA student Asma Shikoh works across media to center human relationships in an increasingly polarized world. Her videos juxtapose pastoral imagery with reports of political violence, questioning what it means to bear witness in a technologically mediated age. In her installations, domestic objects, such as pierced metal cookware, become metaphors for rupture caused by conflict. By mending these openings with thread and gauze, Shikoh performs symbolic repair: tender, fragile, and necessary.

Some MICA students explore shared humanity through the particulars of their own lives. Illustration Practice, MFA student Qiyuan Wen (“ao”) creates precise, richly textured vector drawings in Adobe Illustrator. Wen’s thesis project, MUTUAL, is an illustrated book devoted to everyday rituals: recipes, routines, gestures, and quiet domestic scenes. Though deeply personal, the work feels universally familiar, forming a subtle network of shared experience and mutual presence.

Visit here for a complete schedule of exhibitions, receptions, film screenings, public programs, and student-curated installations throughout Baltimore City. 

About MICA
Founded in 1826, the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) is the nation’s oldest, independent, continuous degree-granting college of art and design. MICA delivers an education that combines a fine arts foundation with the liberal arts and real-world experiences. Through creative entrepreneurship, professional practice, and community and industry partnerships, MICA graduates build sustainable careers and support the creative economy in Baltimore and beyond.