More than 300 talented SAIC students completing undergraduate degrees exhibit their innovative work. SAIC promotes crossing disciplines and challenging received assumptions, and the results of this approach are showcased in this exhibition.

Juried works, faculty selections, and site-specific installations by first-year undergraduate students in the Contemporary Practices program.

Helps It To Feel, Compels It To Make

A symposium featuring the research, writing, and diverse artwork of the second year graduate students in the Visual & Critical Studies Department.

Join the MS Historic Preservation program for our yearly thesis symposium, highlighting research undertaken by our graduating students.

The culminating public presentation of more than 100 MFA candidates’ new and ambitious work. Students work for more than six months with three guest curators and 12 graduate curatorial assistants to envision the exhibition, an approach that allows for dialogue, process, and collaborative decision-making among the curatorial teams and artists.

Following the androgynous, racially indeterminate legs of WalkingStick’s dancers back in time and across the ocean, Jessica L. Horton considers how Indigenous theories of kinship surpass anthropological legacies to enlarge art history’s family tree.

Horton is assistant professor of art history at the University of Delaware. Her research and teaching emphasize the centrality of Native American art to a global story of modernity, focusing on the transcultural movement of people, objects, and ideas.

A cutting-edge runway show featuring senior collections and a one-day exhibition of selected sophomore, junior, and post-baccalaureate work exhibited throughout one of Chicago’s most architecturally significant buildings.

Wednesday, May 9

Program 1: The Desire Trilogy
4:15–5:20pm
Trilogy Desire (The Deaf Boy’s Disease, The Space Between Us, The Last Kiss) by ohm phanphiroj, 40:00

Program 2: Rhythm and Place
6:00–7:20pm
knee jerk | x it strata by Eshovo Momoh, 11:58
Electric Fogs by Samir Nahas, 42:00

Opening Night Reception: 7:30–8:30pm

Program 3: The Space Around You
8:30–9:50pm
Ostrich by Jiahe Liu, 6:05
Fragments of a Past Elegy by Ryan Goh, 7:50
Infinite Approach by Julia Pello, 37:01

Thursday, May 10

Program 4: How to Say Goodbye
4:15–5:50pm
Currents by Xinyi Zhu, 6:00
Goodbye Taiwan by Rebecca Tsai, 60:00

Program 5: Small Towns, Big Places
6:00–7:25pm
The Unwanted Scar by Lu Shan, 14:30
Carlin, Nevada by Jazzy Smith, 37:09

Program 6: Family Ties
8:00–9:35pm
Mote by Jiahe Liu, 4:56
If you swallow a nail, just drink some alcohol by Hu Liwei, 63:05

Friday, May 11

Program 7:  In Another World
4:15 –5:45pm
The Chrysalis by Chase Pottinger, 11 min
World by Chase Pottinger & Zefei Liu, 50 min

Program 8: BFA Senior EXPO: Film, Video, New Media, Animation and Sound
6:00–7:35pm
The Starfruit Tree by Ngoc Ngo, 4:50
Love at Fourth Sight by Kathrin Marinova, 6:42
Bloody Glove Box by Zixin Zhang, 5:07
Cuarenta y Tres (43) by Malény López Alvarez, 2:20
basilisk I by Stefan Glowacki, 7:36
Reaper by Zoë Holmes, 3:00
Liebestod by Yifan Huang, 13:40
Dear Someone by Zefei Liu, 20:00
Melanin – Take & Cover (Super 8 M.V) by Thaib Abdul Wahab, 3:18

Program 9: No Apologies
8:00–9:20pm
Tell us about what happened that November by Jillian Musielak, 15:00
Journey by ohm phanphiroj, 9:13
FEMINICIDO by Malény López Alvarez, 5:00
Traumadex by Holly Arsenault, 22:00

Saturday, May 12

Program 10: Drawing on Time
4:15–5:40pm
FLOSS NIGHT by Tal Ben-Avraham, 1:23
The Designers by Rohan McDonald, 4:25
Star Anomaly (feat. Kep n’ Opes) by Sarah-Michael Batey, 2:57
Smart Nightmares by Marisa Tolomeo, 5:18
Skippy Kills Ku Kluxers by Emeka Awa, 9:30
Icarus Daedalus by Olivia Streb, 3:37
Marionette by Gin Zhang, 2:30
Scobberlotcher by Polly Baggott, 3:30
Devil Chainsaw by SAM Hintz, 1:20
take off by Jenny Chen, 3:00
Sunken by Mario Acosta-Warren, 1:16
Fox & Whale by Griffin Lord, 3:00
Haunted by  Xiyue Sun, 2:15
Sun Sets West by Yan Ting Siu, 8:17

Program 11: Open Action
6:00–7:25pm
James R Thompson Center by Ellery Chalmers, 5:18
Me and the Abyss Looking at Each Other by Moira Liu, 5:28
On Every Image That Might’ve Been Lost by Ryan Goh, 16:20
Patricia Barber: Post-Modern Diva by Joseph Snyder, 28:43

Closing Night Reception: 7:30–8:30pm

Program 12: Just Put Your Lips Together and Blow
8:30–9:40pm
What I’m Looking For by sick cakez, 6:52
Spiritually Superior by zeynep aslanoba, 4:35
Wishing Only Wounds the Heart by Holly Arsenault, 9:41
什么是他妈的真诚的爱 WHAT THE FUCK IS HONEST LOVE by Lu Shan, 12:30
Butterfly, butter and fly by Yuanyu Xiong, 2:32
Good Morning Jenny! by Tal Ben-Avraham, 2:10
The Stacee Show by Ellie Hall, 8:21

Participating Artists Include

The VCD Design Show is a one-night public exhibition that features work by graduating BFA, MFA and Post-bacc designers from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
This is a great opportunity for the Greater Chicagoland area to see design work that is both practical and conceptual, with an interdisciplinary palette of mediums, including print, digital, 2D, 3D, and objects.

Graduating students from SAIC’s Bachelor of Fine Arts in Writing program present their work in an exciting evening that includes texts generated in traditional as well as hybrid and experimental forms. Come and experience fiction, nonfiction, poetry, scripts, electronic media, and performance as you’ve never heard, or seen, before.

Keynote speaker Britt Julious.

Students in the Bachelor of Arts in Visual & Critical Studies Program (BAVCS) and The Bachelor of Fine Arts with Visual & Critical Studies Thesis Program (BFAVCS) present their thesis work, based on a year of independent research, writing, and creative production.

Exhibition is on view and open to the public
May 13 and 14
10:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m.

Please join graduate students in the Master of Arts in Art Therapy program as they present their graduate projects and thesis research.

Graduating students from SAIC’s Master of Fine Arts in Writing program read selections from their work. Join us for a surprising series including, but not limited to, fiction, nonfiction, and text off the page. Discover what writing becomes when students adapt the practices of their studio artist peers.

Monday, March 26
First Panel
9:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.
Second Panel
1:00–3:00 p.m.

Wednesday, March 28
First Panel
9:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.
Second Panel
1:00–3:00 p.m.

Thursday, March 29
First Panel
9:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.
Second Panel
1:00–3:00 p.m.

More than 200 talented SAIC students completing undergraduate degrees this fall exhibit their innovative work. SAIC promotes crossing disciplines and challenging assumptions, and the results of this approach are showcased in this exhibition.