Fifty-Fifth Annual UC Berkeley MFA Exhibition: The Currents Beneath

May 14–July 27, 2025

Celebrate bold new works by six emerging artists in the Fifty-Fifth Annual UC Berkeley Master of Fine Arts Exhibition, where innovative practices meet powerful explorations of community, memory, and transformation.

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Fifty-Fifth Annual UC Berkeley MFA Exhibition: The Currents Beneath

May 14–July 27, 2025

For more than fifty years, BAMPFA and the UC Berkeley Department of Art Practice have partnered to present an exhibition of work by graduating MFA students. This year, six artists—Viviana Martínez Carlos, Priyanka D'Souza, Arianna Khmelniuk, Jasmine Nyende, bryant terry, and Zekarias Musele Thompson—present works of deep research, shared inquiry, and experimental making.

Titled The Currents Beneath, the exhibition draws on a metaphor of moving just below the surface—suggesting ideas, feelings, and forces that may be hidden but stir us nonetheless. These artists examine the layered ways meaning seeps between the senses. Echoing the writer Aruna D'Souza's call for a politics of "imperfect solidarities," one which honors complexity and eschews legibility, the exhibition embraces solidarity without the erasure or flattening of differences.

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The annual MFA exhibition is made possible by the Barbara Berelson Wiltsek Endowment.

The Fifty-Fifth Annual UC Berkeley Master of Fine Arts Graduate Exhibition is curated by Curatorial Associates Matthew Villar Miranda and Tausif Noor.

All BAMPFA exhibitions are organized by staff across museum departments. For a complete list, visit bampfa.org/staff

Fifty-Fifth Annual UC Berkeley MFA Exhibition: The Currents Beneath

May 14–July 27, 2025

Upcoming Events

MFA Artists’ Talk

Past Films