Hailey Loman, 2020
Interdisciplinary Studio at UCLA
The Interdisciplinary Studio focuses not on artistic mediums but on artistic methods. ID students work across artistic mediums, academic disciplines, and social concerns to combine artistic production and focused research in the development of site- and debate-specific forms of critical cultural engagement that extend beyond the framework of individual studio art practice.
Interdisciplinary Studio Area Head Andrea Fraser serves as the primary adviser to graduate students admitted to this area of study. Students in graduate ID are encouraged to work with faculty across other areas within the Department of Art and to take advantage of UCLA's extensive academic resources over their three-year course of study.
All M.F.A. students are offered the use of individual studios off-campus in the UCLA Margo Leavin Graduate Art Studios, located in Culver City. In addition to individual studio spaces, the studio building houses photography, sculpture, ceramics, and computer labs, as well as open spaces for exhibitions, lectures, and group critiques. Although the Department of Art does not offer graduate level courses in the summer, the graduate studios are open year-round.
Background
Interdisciplinary Studio was established as a graduate area of study in 1997 by Mary Kelly during her tenure as Art Department Chair. Kelly created ID in response to a growing demand among young artists for a graduate program in which they could pursue project-based work driven by social purpose and grounded in interdisciplinary research. Andrea Fraser took over as Area Head in 2017, developing an undergraduate ID curriculum in 2021. ID alumni have worked in activism and advocacy, architecture, archives, books, chemistry, community organizing, dance, film, food, human rights, installation, law, music, painting, performance, photography, publishing, sculpture, social practice, sound, theater, and video, among other field of practice. They include Ph.D. candidates from leading universities; founders of activist groups, archives, dance companies, foundations, journals and presses; participants Documenta, Made in LA, PERFORMA, the Sundance Film Festival, the Whitney Biennial; recipients of Herb Alpert and Mohn Awards, and Foundation for Contemporary Art Grants, and Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellowships; and faculty at art schools and universities across the United States and Europe.
Interdisciplinary Studio Faculty
Professor
Andrea Fraser
Professor
Cauleen Smith
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Interdisciplinary Studio Lab Supervisor
Chris Bassett
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Location & Contact Information
Interdisciplinary Studio Area Location
Interdisciplinary Studio is one of six areas of study offered in the M.F.A. Art program. Class meetings are held at the Margo Leavin Graduate Art Studios in Culver City.
Faculty Office Hours
Email faculty directly to arrange virtual office hours
Interdisciplinary Studio Faculty
Andrea Fraser, Professor
T: (310) 206-6752
Office: 2275F Broad Art Center
Cauleen Smith, Professor
T: (310) 825-3281
Office: 2275 Broad Art Center
Facilities & Equipment
In addition to studios in UCLA MLGAS and an office in the Broad Art Center, M.F.A. Candidates in the Interdisciplinary Studio Area have access to a range of Departmental Facilities, including the Digital Studio, and may arrange to use the equipment and facilities of other Art Department Areas. Beyond the Department of Art, UCLA and Los Angeles offer a broad range of artistic, academic, and professional resources.
Interdisciplinary Studio Courses
Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Studio Courses
Art 149. Advanced Interdisciplinary Studio
Units: 5
Studio, eight hours; seven hours arranged. Requisites: courses 31A, 31B, 31C. Varied project-based studies in conceptually-driven approaches to art making in which students' core concerns and aims determine all aspects of projects, including medium, method, and presentational context. Combination of courses 149 and 149A may be repeated for maximum of 20 units. Letter grading.
Art 149A. Advanced Interdisciplinary Studio: Topics in Anti-Racism, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion
Units: 5
Studio, eight hours; seven hours arranged. Requisites: courses 31A, 31B, 31C. Varied project-based studies in conceptually-driven approaches to art making that advance anti-racism, equity, diversity, and inclusion. Students' core concerns and aims determine all aspects of projects, including medium, method, and presentational context. Combination of courses 149 and 149A may be repeated for maximum of 20 units. Letter grading.
Graduate Interdisciplinary Studio Courses
Art 278. Interdisciplinary Studio
Units: 2 to 8
Studio, eight hours. Tutorial focused on directed research, studio visits, and group discussions of recommended readings. May be repeated for credit. S/U or letter grading.
Art 276. Graduate Group Critique
Units: 4
Discussion, four hours; tutorial, to be arranged. Group critique/discussion of students' research. Additional tutorial meetings by arrangement with instructor. May be repeated for credit. Letter grading.
Art C280. Graduate Seminar
Units: 4
Seminar, three hours. Advanced topics in critical theory and study of contemporary art, with emphasis on individuals, issues, and methodologies. Possible areas of study from structuralism, deconstruction, feminist and psychoanalytic theory, commodification, and censorship. May be repeated for credit. Concurrently scheduled with course C180. Letter grading.
Current M.F.A. Candidates
ann haeyoung / a-tbd.com
ann haeyoung is a media artist from Seoul, Korea. She is interested in technology and labor. She uses the inefficient, banal, and organic to counteract dominant narratives of technological progress. Her work often includes surreal and site-specific rituals that highlight the physical infrastructure and residue of the technology industry. ann is a former tech worker and labor organizer, and has recently been working on a worker-led oral history and archive of the tech worker labor movement. She received her BA in International Relations from Brown University, and was a student and educator at the artist-run School for Poetic Computation.
video still from Doulas of the Computer Age (2021) that shows a gloved hand holding a semiconductor wafer against a red background
Star Feliz / cimarron.earth
Star Feliz is an interdisciplinary artist and medicine person born and raised in Lenapehoking territory [New York City] to parents from Kiskeya Ayiti [Dominican Republic]. An entanglement with archival research, disarming apparatuses of violence, and earth based healing inform their practice. They work to reclaim ancestral technologies that have been systematically erased by drawing from multiple disciplines to unearth histories and make space for decolonial futures. After almost 10 years of studying and practicing community based herbalism, in late 2020 Star launched Botánica Cimarrón. Botánica Cimarrón is a lifestyle brand creating powerful plant medicines and spiritual tools for revolutionary hearts. Inspired by the traditions of Caribbean folk healing, the aesthetics of high romance, and historical experiments in free living, Botánica Cimarrón works to bring earth healing back to the people.
Para Reclamar (Video Still), 2021. Window installation: golden nuggets, mounds of dirt, vinyl graphic, single channel video (3:33 min)
Jamie Ross / jamieross.org
Jamie Ross is a film artist, a city gardener and preschool teacher. In recent moving images, Radical Faerie elders help young people memorize the chants sung in 20th-century Queer street battles with the police; Pagan men incarcerated in federal prisons in Québec share intimate encounters with the divine alongside Jamie, their chaplain, and the portrait of a season at a sheep farm run by witches on a remote hill in the Appalachians is centered on the flow of autumnal viscera and liquids. Jamie’s video works have been screened and installed in exhibitions in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, England, France, Haiti, Hong Kong, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, Sweden, the United States, and throughout Canada. Recent work was presented at the Plug In ICA (Winnipeg, Canada), Lugar a Dudas (Cali, Colombia), and the Momenta Biennale (Montréal, Québec).
Jamie Ross, Quarry's Edge, 16:9, (2020) (video still)
Cielo Saucedo / www.sickinquarters.com
Cielo Saucedo is a disabled artist from a family of Mexican migrant farm workers. They use computer generated imagery, nonfiction writing and sculpture to disrupt notions of humanism and center impaired ecologies//mind-bodies. Technology mediates their artistic production within the wax and wane of their ability. From this direct response to their body, an unprivileged mutuality between ecological space and virtual experience is offered. In their work video games trace histories of oil infrastructure and birch trees are woven into sand dunes. Cielo has shown work in New York, Chicago, London and Quito. They participate in the collective SIQ (Sick in Quarters) and are a founding member of W.E., an ecological action group started in Chicago. They received their BFA from School of the Art Institute, Chicago.
Keep Moving Forward, 2018, Video Game hosted on Unity, 2 levels.
alma alvarado / www.pinkhousecollective.com/about/
Harrison Kinnane Smith / harrisonksmith.com
Harrison Kinnane Smith is an artist whose work aims to highlight racialized systems of power by exploring the interactions between material systems (ecologies, commercial networks, public services) and immaterial structures (policies, financial networks, ideologies). His work has been shown at the Mattress Factory Museum and published by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. He received a BA in Art and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology from Yale University.
Property Tax Indemnification (with Hayley Haldeman and Jordan B. Abbott)
City of Pittsburgh general obligation municipal bond, escrow account, mortgage. 2021.
Alumni
Kearra Amaya Gopee M.F.A. ’22 / www.kearramaya.com
alea adigweme M.F.A. ’22 / www.alea.me
Kimi Hanauer M.F.A. ’21 / www.kimihanauer.com
Nathaniel Whitfield M.F.A. ’21 / www.nathanielwhitfield.com
Hailey Loman M.F.A. ’20 / www.haileyloman.com
Jae Hwan Lim M.F.A. ’20 / www.jaehwanlim.com
Shevaun Wright M.F.A. ’19 / www.shevaunwright.com
Brannon Rockwell-Charland M.F.A. ’19 / brannonrockwellcharland.com
John Hulsey M.F.A. ’18 / www.wesleyan.edu/academics/faculty/jhulsey/profile.html
Todd McQuade M.F.A. ’18 / toddmcquade.net
Tomas Percival M.F.A. ’17 / www.tomaspercival.com
Damir Avdagic M.F.A. ’16 / damiravdagic.com
Michael Cataldi M.F.A. ’15 / www.michaelcataldi.com
Abigail Collins M.F.A. ’15 / www.abigailcollins.net
Sean Raspet M.F.A. ’14 / seanraspet.org
Brennan Gerard & Ryan Kelly M.F.A. ’13 / gerardandkelly.com
Hans Kuzmich M.F.A. ’13
Tejpal Ajji M.F.A. ’12
Ragen Moss M.F.A. ’12 / ragenmoss.com
Meleko Mokgosi M.F.A. ’11 / www.melekomokgosi.com
Peter Lynde M.F.A. ’10
Jane Jin Kaisen M.F.A. ’10 / janejinkaisen.com
Wu Tsang M.F.A. ’10 / wutsang.com
Alexandro Segade M.F.A. ’09 / cargocollective.com/mybarbarian
Jesse Aron Green M.F.A. ’08 / www.jessearongreen.com
Charlotte Smith M.F.A. ’08
Michelle Dizon M.F.A. ’08 / www.michelledizon.com
David Hatcher M.F.A. ’06
Dont Rhine M.F.A. ’06 / www.ultrared.org
Emily Roysdon M.F.A. ’06 / emilyroysdon.com
Jose Carlos Teixeira M.F.A. ’06 / www.josecarlosteixeira.com
Shana Lutker M.F.A. ’05 / shanalutker.com
David Thorne M.F.A. ’04 / www.meltzerthorne.com
Sara Jordenö M.F.A. ’03 / www.jordeno.com
Karl Haendel M.F.A. ’03 / www.miandn.com/artists/karl-haendel?view=slider#8
Sharon Hayes M.F.A. ’03 / www.shaze.info
Kianga Ford M.F.A. ’03 / ledbydesire.com
Kerry Tribe M.F.A. ’02 / www.kerrytribe.com
Cletus Dalglish-Schommer M.F.A. ’02
Primitivo Suarez M.F.A. ’00 / artstationtest2.wordpress.com/about
Kenneth Berger M.F.A. ’00 / www.risd.edu/academics/theory-and-history-art-and-design/faculty/kenneth-berger
Mungo Thomson M.F.A. ’00 / mungothomson.com
Nicholas Kersulis M.F.A. ’00 / kersulis.com