Arts Division Newsletter

Louisa Balderas’s work was recently featured in her exhibition at Eduardo Carrillo Senior Gallery, entitled Unapologetically, Me, as part of the Art Department’s Senior Show. She is an artist and an activist, an artivist, from Los Angeles. Her pursuit of art, economics, and sustainable studies is inspired by her family’s strive to achieve the American dream.

Benabdallah’s film, How to Reverse a Spell, the Promise of an Archive won the award for Best Experimental Short Film at Sharjah Film Platform, the Sharjah Art Foundation's film festival. The film is a speculative triptych traversing the disappearance of the Moroccan public archives, the colonial displacement of videos, and finally, a prayer for an apocalyptic solar flare that can return things to how they never were.

Kyle Parry’s first book, A Theory of Assembly: From Museums to Memes, will be published in January 2023. A Theory of Assembly argues that one of the most powerful and pervasive cultural forms in the digital era is assembly. Whether as subtle photographic sequences, satirical Venn diagrams, or networked archives, projects based in assembly do not so much narrate or represent the world as rearrange it, and as the world becomes ever hotter, more connected, and more algorithmic, the need to map—and remake—assembly’s powers and perils becomes all the more pressing.

The child of parents that immigrated from Hong Kong, Alice Szeto Gallup said figuring out her career path has come with unique challenges. The new Arts Director of Academic Planning and Resources had to learn to create her career path without a blueprint or a built-in network of support.

As an undergraduate at UC Santa Cruz, Gillian Welch’s senior work was in photography. Born in Manhattan, Welch grew up in West L.A. where her parents wrote for the television comedy series The Carol Burnett Show. After graduating from UC Santa Cruz, she met her musical partner David Rawlings while both were students at the Berklee School of Music, and they soon began performing as a duo. The surprise success of the O Brother, Where Art Thou film soundtrack—and the release of her remarkable third album Time (The Revelator) in 2001—put Welch firmly in the spotlight of the traditional American folk-roots revival movement.

On November 3, 2022, KPFA’s APEX Express host Miko Lee spoke with professors Dr. Celine Parreñas Shimizu and Dr. Robyn Magalit Rodriguez about their approach to education, activism, motherhood and moving forward.

Susana Ruiz, UC Santa Cruz Assistant Professor of Film and Digital Media, together with Emmy Award nominated director of photography and media artist Huy Truong have been selected as one of ten recipients of this year’s Hewlett 50 Arts Commissions in Media Arts. The prestigious grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation will fund the creation of a new media work related to the history of Santa Cruz’s Chinatowns.

Film and Digital Media Ph.D. candidate Shirin Towfiq has been selected by Hank Willis Thomas’ For Freedoms artist collective to exhibit work in front of the United Nations building in New York. Towfiq was recently in New York for a press preview for the Eyes On Iran installation at FDR Four Freedoms Park, an ongoing event that faces the United Nations building, happening alongside the decision process regarding Iran's membership in the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women. Her work is being shown next to Shirin Neshat, JR, Hank Willis Thomas, Sheida Soleimani, Aphrodite Désirée Navab, Z, Icy and Sot, Mahvash, and Sepideh Mehraban.



Art Department Lecturer Wes Modes (DANM M.F.A. 2015) and Lauren Benz (DANM M.F.A. 2017) recently completed an installation in the Northern Nevada desert. Black Rock Station is an interactive site-specific sound and new media piece that uses Northern Nevada’s railroad history and the Black Rock playa’s harsh and beautiful environment to create a memorable and mysterious experience for participants. The work will be exhibited in Gerlach, Nevada, until August of next year.



From the New York Times: Nina Barzegar's world premiere “Inexorable Passage” was thrilling in its fusion of experimental, extended-technique effects, as well as melodic and chordal inventions. Written for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano, the eight-minute “Inexorable Passage” felt packed, and moved along with momentum.

As a co-founder of Explode! Platform, Assistant Professor, Art, Cláudio Bueno, is co-curating the public program of the exhibition Parable of the Progress. The exhibition opened at Sesc Pompeia (Sao Paulo, Brazil) on October 26, 2022, on the occasion of the space’s 40th anniversary. The exhibition takes as its organizing principle the cultural center’s Área de Convivência (Living Space)—whose conception, under architect Lina Bo Bardi’s renovation, was informed by care, sensitivity, and conviviality—to raise utopian values that underlie collective efforts ​​to “build another reality.” An extensive Public Program will feature approximately 50 participants in 60 activities.

Mahshid Modares, SocDoc alum (2020) and second-year Ph.D., was interviewed by MENAarts (for youth) in July 2022 for her film Sanctions on the Sky. Mahshid’s exhibition review titled Tangibility and Intangibility in Mani Mehrzad’s Arts was published in Honar Augah Art Magazine in Tehran in June 2022. Sanctions on the Sky was screened at Awareness Film Festival in Los Angeles in October 2022 and at Los Angeles Lift-Off Film Festival on September 2022. 



In fall 2021, Sharon Daniel, Professor of Film and Digital Media, launched a two-quarter course titled “Reasonable Doubts: Making an Exoneree” co-taught with Georgetown professors Marc Howard and Marty Tankleff. Ghostly Labor: A Dance Film is a culmination of a years-long collaboration between Professor of Film and Digital Media John Jota Leaños, San Francisco-based dance company La Mezcla, and non-profit Ayudando Latinos a Soñar.

Dean Celine Parreñas Shimizu’s latest film, 80 Years Later, recently won a major award from the Henri and Tomoye Takahashi Charitable Foundation. The gift will enable the film to be more widely distributed and is especially meaningful since this year is the 80th anniversary of the executive order that incarcerated over 120,000 Japanese Americans. The film explores the racial inheritance of Japanese American family incarceration during World War II through multigenerational conversations. Henri and Tomoye Takahashi, along with Tomoye’s sister Martha Masako Suzuki, established the family foundation in 1986. All three American citizens were incarcerated in the Topaz, Utah, concentration camp during World War II simply because of their Japanese ancestry. After the war the family returned to San Francisco, determined to help build friendship and good will for Japanese Americans and to improve understanding with Japan.