Alexis C. McDonald is a visual artist who uses installation, video, collage, and found materials. Growing up in Atlanta, McDonald was exposed to hip hop very early on and sees it as a site for self expression and sexual liberation. McDonald’s works demonstrate how black women integrate their affinity for hip hop with a politics of resistance. She recognizes the agency these women possess and encourages the audience to confront the limitations placed on black women preventing them from accessing and capitalizing on their sensuality. In May 2020, McDonald received her MFA from the University of Southern California’s Roski School of Art & Design. She is currently based in Miami, Fl.

@thealexischanel

Casey Kauffmann is an interdisciplinary artist whose digital and drawing practices address the contemporary performance of self as it relates to her experience of femme representation, social media, and reality television. She received her MFA from The University of Southern California and her Bachelor of Arts from The Evergreen State College in Washington. Kauffmann’s work has been featured in LAWeekly, The New Yorker, I-D Vice, Hyperallergic, and has been exhibited in galleries such as Transfer Gallery, the Brand Library in Glendale, Leimin Space, and more. Her collage Instagram project @uncannysfvalley, which she started in 2014, features digital collage works and GIFs created using only her iPhone. Her video works including her ongoing video collage project, Knowing Others and Wanting to be Known, transform elements of consumer culture through a process of recontextualization. Kauffmann’s drawing practice functions as an inquiry into representations of femme emotion and hysteria in both art history and popular culture.

caseykauffmann.net
@uncannysfvalley

In examining her own cultural history, and her experience around tattooed people, Danie Cansino has become interested in the comradery, and also prejudices that tattooed people encounter. Growing up in the greater East Los Angeles area, Cansino explores the notion that clients, peers, and her personal mentors all have stories to tell— showing the impact a tattoo can have on lifestyle, family, education, employment, and careers. Danie Cansino shares these stories; and shines light on lineage, tradition, and the hardships of this practice. Tattooing, very much like all the elements of her work, is a major part of the history of her Latinx culture, and hometown of Los Angeles.

Born in Los Angeles, Danie Cansino is an educator and resident artist at Mi Familia Tattoo Studio, where she specializes in color, and Chicanx style black and grey realism. In fall of 2019, Danie began her candidacy for Master of Fine Arts, attending the University of Southern California. Danie Cansino has aspirations to help and teach others through the means of higher education, and through the creation and design of her own artwork and tattoos.

roski.usc.edu/community/students/danie-cansino
@daniecansino

Diane Williams is a Filipinx-American, immigrant, artist and organizer based in Los Angeles, CA. In her work, she examines colonial legacies and the roles people play in systems and institutions of power. Williams explores this idea by drawing her audience into a deconstructed and hybrid space, real and imagined, familiar and unfamiliar, creating a counter-narrative based on her diasporic positionality.

Her work has been featured in select publications and radio interviews including Los Angeles Magazine, LA Weekly, Artillery, Eastsider LA, Art and Cake, P&A Magazine and KPFK. Williams exhibited in several solo and group shows at the Armory Center for the Arts, Walter Maciel Gallery, Museum of Art and History MOAH, PØST, Cerritos College Gallery, Robert and Frances Fullerton Museum of Art RAFFMA, California State University San Diego, Children’s Museum of the Arts New York, Berkeley Art Center, San Francisco Arts Commission Galleries SFAC and Grafiska Sällskapet Stockholm, Sweden among others. She has works in private and public collections at the National Immigration Law Center, Los Angeles and Washington DC headquarters and Azusa Pacific University.  Williams earned her Bachelors of Fine Arts degree at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) in 2013 and a 2021 Masters of Fine Arts candidate at University of Southern California (USC).

dianewilliamsartist.com/
@dianewilliamsartist

Hings Lim (b. 1989, Kuala Lumpur) is a process-oriented artist who addresses the interconnectivity and performativity of things. His interdisciplinary practice is resembled by a diverse use of medium that includes video, image, object, performance, and situation. His works, often participatory, explore the notion of becoming while echoing the rethink of the in-between of subjectivities.Hings received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, Malaysia. He is a recipient of the Petronas – P. Ramlee Chair’s Award in 2012 and completed the Southeast Asian Artist Residency Program at Rimbun Dahan, Selangor, Malaysia in 2018. He is currently pursuing a Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles as a recipient of the USC International Artist Fellowship.

www.hingslim.com

Jiyoon Kim is an interdisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles and Seoul, South Korea. Kim considers the physical and emotional demands placed upon the body by repetitive labors such as adapting to new languages, cleaning and her body oneself. In her installation, video, and performance-based practice, she explores the accumulated material and psychological side effects of the constant processes of training and habituation to which the body is subject. Kim received her BFA from Seoul National University. She is currently an MFA candidate at the USC Roski School of Art and Design and a Fulbright Visiting Scholar.

vimeo.com/kimmunityy
@kimmunityy

Johnny Forever Nawracaj is a nonbinary Polish-born multidisciplinary artist working primarily in performance and video. Coming from the social realist settlement district of Nowa Huta, Poland they were a childhood immigrant to Tkaronto/Toronto. Nawracaj developed their current practice while the based in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal where they received an MA in Art History from Concordia University. Forged on DIY queer cabaret stages, their work weaves surrealist narrative through video, installation, and femme-inflected performance to explore labour and loss. Nawracaj is particularly invested in exploring these themes in relation to queer and nonbinary cultural production.

Forever has shown work internationally, recently showing work Los Angeles at Human Resources, at Meinblau Projektraum in Berlin, and in Mexico City as part of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics' 11thEncuentro.

In May 2020, Nawracaj graduated with a Master of Fine Arts degree from USC Roski School of Art and Design as an International Artist Fellow.

www.johnnyforever.ca/
@joachim_magdalena

José Guadalupe Sánchez III is an interdisciplinary artist with an emphasis on painting. His work is an investigation of the interactions between different value systems found throughout Los Angeles, with a focus on intelligence, legitimacy, and authority. A driving question in his practice asks, “how as artists can we make work that, on the one hand, validates the neglected experiences of the people we care about (i.e., through direct positive representation and intervention) and, on the other, be a critical reflection on those structures that created the conditions of making a people socially, politically, economically invisible?” His projects manifest as pedagogical interventions as an arts educator for marginalized youth, paintings, performance, video, documentary video, and his socially engaged art practice.

     
vimeo.com/theotrajose
@theotrajose      

Josh Beliso is a contemporary artist known for his unique adapatation of the classical stone medium. He was born in the South Bay of Los Angeles, immersed in the sleepy, sun-kissed lifestyle of beach culture. Mundane objects act as muses for his fluid, theatrical interpretations of the everyday. Hairstyles, accessories, and the foods we consume throughout passing centuries are immortalized through the archaic medium of stone—creating relevance and permanence out of fleeting moments, objects, emotions, and eras. Using an archaic medium such as stone to embody mundane objects is both a love letter to materialism and a subtle critique. Stone is powerful by design, and exudes a monumental quality even before it is touched by the artist or craftsman. Marble is earth in its most pure state, forming from calcium rich limestone containing the shells, coral deposits, and bones from ancient organisms. The aesthetics of stone and marble can be manipulated, but its essence remains untouched. The alchemny of this material transcendence is to turn stone to milk, or a lush wig of hair.

Josh Beliso
Groucho Knows

www.joshbeliso.com
@color_and_stone

Paulson Lee is a Los Angeles based artist who explores the performative self, the exchange between material and immaterial, and the digital landscape of the internet through his painting, installation, and video practices. Trained as a painter, draftsman, and illustrator, Lee's practice is heavily based in the narrative.

Paulson Lee uses painting, video, and mixed media to create an immersive world that addresses grief,  anxiety, and healing translated through the escapist languages of pop culture, mass media, and Southern California aesthetics. Constantly flickering between satire and sincerity, Lee's work highlights the dual nature of identity and the tension that this creates— the veneer and what lies just beneath the surface.

paulsonlee.com
@hellopaulson

Rachel Zaretsky is a Los Angeles based artist who uses performance, video, and photography to challenge our relationship to the creation of memories. Her inquiry-based art practice examines how modes of representation can portray absence, how we process loss, and our desire to preserve through memorialization. Zaretsky holds a BFA from The School of Visual Arts in New York and is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Southern California.

www.rachelzaretsky.com
@rzzzzz

Allison C. Hernandez is a writer, musician, and curator based in Los Angeles. She is currently an MA candidate in the Curatorial Program at University of Southern California’s Roski School of Art and Design. She holds a BA degree from UCLA in Ethnomusicology and an Erhu performance degree from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. Allison’s projects encompass ideas of memory, nostalgia, intergenerational trauma, and Holocaust monuments and counter-monuments. She is currently working on an upcoming exhibition showcasing artworks by Holocaust survivors, who found pathways to healing through artmaking.

roski.usc.edu/community/students/allison-hernandez

Bianca Morán is a curator, educator, and writer based in Los Angeles. She is currently the Curator and Public Programs Coordinator at Active Cultures. A former K-16 educator in Los Angeles, her work is deeply informed by culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy. Her research interests include history, race and ethnicity, foodways, diaspora, education and pedagogy, critical theory, film, and visual culture. Bianca holds an M.A. in Curatorial Practice and the Public Sphere from USC, an M.Ed. in Education from UCLA, and a B.A. in Political Science with a minor in Ethnic Studies from UC Berkeley. She was born in Los Angeles and raised between the Bay Area and LA. Bianca is also a single mother raising her daughter, Paloma.

www.biancamoran.com

Hugo Cervantes is a writer and curator based in Los Angeles. They are Associate Curator at Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND) and a member of the non-profit art space Human Resources-Los Angeles. They recently co-organized Kahlil Joseph's BLKNWS, a city-wide public art project included in The Hammer Museum's biennial “Made in L.A 2020: a version.” 

nomadicdivision.org
humanresourcesla.com

Joseph Daniel Valencia is a curator, educator, and writer based in Los Angeles and Orange County, California. Since 2016, Joseph has helped organize nearly one hundred educational programs and twenty exhibitions at the Vincent Price Art Museum, including Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell (2017-2021) and solo projects by Gabriela Ruiz, Guadalupe Rosales, and Patrick Martinez. Recently curated exhibitions include one never remembers alone (2020) and noé olivas: Que sueñes con los angelitos (2019), both at USC’s Roski Gallery, and Liberate the Bar! Queer Nightlife, Activism, and Spacemaking (2019) at ONE Gallery, West Hollywood. He is currently co-organizing a major exhibition of Latinx and Caribbean sound-based artists, extending from the early avant-gardism of experimental sound art to new interdisciplinary practices. He holds an MA in Curatorial Practices and the Public Sphere from USC Roski School of Art and Design and a BA in Art History from California State University, Fullerton.

josephdanielvalencia.com

Kate Rouhandeh is a writer and curator from New York living in Los Angeles. She is currently an MA candidate in the USC Roski Curatorial Practices and the Public Sphere Program and holds a BA in English Language and Literature from the University of Chicago. At present, she is a graduate intern at the Project X Foundation for Art and Criticism, the Los Angeles-based nonprofit and publisher of X-TRA Journal . Previously, she has worked in nonprofit film exhibition, and has curated film programs in collaboration with Los Angeles cinema and project space Now Instant Image Hall, such as a recent online presentation of Moyra Davey’s Notes on Blue (2015) and Derek Jarman’s Blue (1993), and a program organized around language, distorted transmissions, and maritime signal code, featuring Courtney Stephens’ Mixed Signals (2018). Her curatorial and research interests include epistolary forms, essay film, and intertextuality and reading as methodologies within the context of appropriative art movements.

Loujain Bager is an art historian, artist, and curator based in Los Angeles, California. She received her MA in Curatorial Practices and the Public Sphere from the University of Southern California's Roski School of Art and Design, and BA in Art History with a minor in Art from Florida International University. Her graduate thesis explores contemporary art in Saudi Arabia. Bager currently works as an artist assistant at Sherin Guirguis Studio and recently served as curatorial assistant for Live Artists Live III: Despair/Repair, a performance art event hosted by USC. She has also been a curatorial assistant at Leiminspace; a curatorial intern at the Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum; and an intern in education at the California African American Museum (CAAM). She recently participated in the discussion series of 11:11 A Creative Collective, sponsored by the Department of Cultural Affairs, viewable here.

I design, paint, and translate. I translate words into images, ideas into graphics, narration into visual stories, personal needs into user stories to user experience, and student work into their grades. My curiosity in exploring ways of communication has led me to design books, identities, presentations, websites, interfaces and so on. I find it incredibly rewarding to work in multiple disciplines and with different people, learning new skills each time while engaging new methods of visual presentation. I also enjoy exercising, traveling, painting, and planning for new adventures in video games.

www.caixisong.com/

Chih-Wei Chao is an interaction designer and researcher. She is a second-year MFA Design student at the Roski School of Art and Design at the University of Southern California. She holds a Bachelor in Industrial Design from Tung Hai University, Taiwan. Prior to joining Roski’s MFA program, Chih-Wei worked as a multimedia designer at Decathlon and as a researcher at Industrial Technology Research Institute. She won the “Young Pin Nomination” in the “Young Pin Award.” She is interested in exploring the possibilities of non-linear narrative design and making spatial visualizations of sound. Her research includes using intelligent systems to make environmental data and soundscapes sensible through interactive websites, interactive installations, immersive environments, and data-driven 3D models that focus on social, cultural, and biological issues. She aims to build connections between people and the environment and have positive impacts on people’s lives.

My work as a multimedia artist and sound designer encompasses my study of the subconscious mind and the recurring places I find myself in my dream space. Within the virtual world LUSH, the foundations of my memories begin to find life again in a world of my own design. The physical and emotional experiences shared by the subliminal mind are often communicated in my work by building interactive sculptures and videos that discuss vivid dreaming, self-reflection, and the mental safety net of the dream space. In this new conceptual iteration, beginning with the development of a personal virtual world, I have begun to dig into my dream diary and recollections of childhood comforts to create a surreal interactive space. The space evokes the happiness that millennial children experienced through gameplay in the 1990’s and early 2000’s. In channeling the “PS1” or low-poly game world, LUSH provides nostalgia to a generation that grew up on the blocky beginnings of gaming in 3D simulated space.

ginamahre.digital/

I work across a wide range of media including photography, installation, and illustration. I was born and raised in Beijing, China and currently live in the United States. As an artist and designer both cultures drive and inspire my work. Memories of the places I have traveled and the experiences I have had in those places are the subject of my current projects.

As a woman, opening Chinese social media to read the news has become an increasingly scary thing. Every week women are brutally killed. The offenders are often people close to them—ex-boyfriends, current husbands, and so on. From cutting throats in the street to quiet high-IQ crimes, crimes against women never stop. There is no law to protect these women, and society often regards these acts as “family disputes” and stops helping these women.

The digital illustration “Blood Wedding” is for the victims of these crimes. The female figure wears a gorgeous wedding dress, but she is injured and bleeding. She opens her mouth to ask for help, but no one hears her.

Juan Ye (Juii) is a multi-disciplinary Product | UX designer based in Los Angeles who is interested in examining the way people interact with the world while exploring approaches that benefit society. Juii’s versatile cross-cultural experiences in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Osaka, and Los Angeles have shaped her as a creative problem-solver with tolerance for diverse perspectives. Juii likes to create interactive experiences for people with craftmanship and cutting-edge technologies including virtual reality, 3D printing, responsive surfaces, interactive wearables, and generative algorithms. Protecting the environment and sustainable design is central in her projects. Juii was invited to lecture at the annual International Disaster Prevention Technology Communication Conference in Bogota in 2017 and 2018 for creating 3D visualizations of tsunami simulations in Cartagena and Tumaco, Colombia.

www.juiiye.com/

I am currently an MFA design student, from China, at USC and my undergraduate background is in visual and communication design. I have always enjoyed the study of graphic design, not only because it allows me to create fantastic logos and pictures, but also for its concentration of crucial information and delivery of meaningful and even influential messages. Now my primary creative direction is making illustrations into frame-by-frame animation. This makes the illustrations and stories more vivid and interesting. I paint the emotional inner lives of people using “Pierce” as my main character. Daily life and even some dark moments are included in my narratives. Through animation and funny illustrations, I reflect on the social phenomena of modern society.

I have been painting since I was a toddler. I have a strong background in traditional arts, such as sketching and painting. I am also interested in applying my artistic skills to new media and technologies. I am currently painting while exploring user experience and user interface (UX/UI) design to create apps and games.

My work is inspired by the daily events that happen around us. As a graduate student, now living in Los Angeles, I am using graphic design to address current social problems. Presently my practice includes illustrations and paintings.

The fashion industry’s broad negative environmental and social impacts drive me to develop better solutions through design approaches. My work re-conceptualizes the relationships between fashion, identity, and place. In this project, I’ve used regional plants to dye garments in Yucca Valley, CA.

“Genius loci,” a concept in the fields of architecture and urban planning, equates to the “authentic spirit of a place” and “the deeply rooted essence” of regions. My work extends this concept to ethical fashion design. How can places and landscapes inform and influence our connection with everyday objects like clothing?

My designs investigate a return to locally sourced materials to create. An abundance of resources is available that can be sourced locally. There is beauty in the diversity of materials and objects that come out of different places. With the pandemic halting the ability to travel across borders, a return to local thinking has already begun.

samdewey.co/bookdesign/

Sebin Song is a multidisciplinary designer with a background in customer experience design. Her graduate thesis practice narrates discourses about technology and human interaction, seeking to discover a humane way to absorb information and technological influences. For her, interaction design improves the visual environment and functions as a vehicle for communication and connection in order to interact with large and varied audiences. As a contemporary designer, she strives to understand and forge connections to help varied audiences visualize and interact with the world through design thinking and creative problem-solving. 

Today, the argument can be made that social media is connecting more people than ever before. However, the quality of social media-induced connection can and should be questioned to properly assess the true benefits and consequences of this rapid coalescence. Inspired by a marketing campaign in which the company highlighted several group experiences as a way to digitally connect with others, Hidden Diversion in Natural Amalgamation questions the nature of that new connection, and leads the viewer to challenge the message promoted by the company. It is in the best interest of these companies to capture more of our time and emotions, but we have the agency to limit the influence of social media and the never-ending stream of anxiety inducing content it exposes us to.

www.sebinsong.info/

Erin is a survey bot application (Chat-bot system), which encourages users to measure emotions in their social relations and manage them. By combining interactive visual surveys in conversational flow, the user easily goes through the survey journey. Within each question, the user picks graphic elements, resulting in an “emotion symbol” that represents the user’s answers.

As a UX/UI designer specializing in user interface and experience I strive to make people’s life unique and delightful. I combine my background in communication design and user experience design with my desire to create an empathetic experience for the user. 

I am interested in solving complex social problems through psychological research findings, quantitative data, and utilizing my creativity as a passionate designer. I believe a user experience designer is someone who understands the user's behavior and emotions. In the future, I look forward to creating human-centered design that engages diverse audiences and influences social change. 

www.soyoungl.com/

Living in Los Angeles and studying at USC during the COVID pandemic has inspired me to create work based the changes I experienced in my environment.  This painting shows a shop’s business in the current epidemic environment. The folded chairs inside contrast with the chairs outside which holds a package of take-out food.

I saw many shops close in this environment, but others are still working hard to generate new business, especially through catering. Among these shops, I found that only take out, not dine-in, is possible. So the rooms are full of chairs folded together. In the past, this image would represent going out of business, but here and now it has become a sign of efforts to survive. 

Before stepping foot in the world of design, I completed my bachelor's degree at Boston University studying advertising and communication, where I began exploring artistic elements in contemporary media. This helped me enhance my creative mindset through in-depth analysis and interpretation of media representations. I became increasingly aware of using complementary color and typography, and gradually developed my aesthetic. I always carry a desire for a pure pursuit of art and design that reflects my understanding and perceptions of life and emotions. Coming to USC Roski and studying design helps me learn how to effectively tell the stories I seek to tell and transform the world I see into concrete representations.

www.tinatianyiran.com/

I have studied theatre and dance and now I am a graduate student of design. These two posters are aimed to promote the theater company’s spirit, “戲”(Theatre) and “感”(Feeling). It is based on the lighting of the theater. Black and white are the staff’s usual colors, whether their tools or clothes. These two posters are also based on the feeling of black and white. In particular, at the center of the circle, I used geometric figures to piece together the shapes of these two words 戲 and 感. The circle is like the stage, the middle words convey the content of the actors to the audience, and the geometric figures represent the tools of the staff behind the stage, which combines the enthusiasm and efforts of the entire crew. In the black poster, this atmosphere mimics the darkness of the auditorium as the drama begins, the stage is bright and the performance takes place. When the play ends and the lights go up, the whole world becomes bright and the white spaces leave the audience with unlimited imagination and introspective feelings. As a designer who grew up in two different cultures, I appreciate all culture, history, and technology and use them as my inspirations.  

I have multicultural educational and life experience as well as a multi-disciplinary art and design background. I am passionate about finding human-centered captivating solutions with empathy for complicated problems. This work is code art—also known as generative art – an algorithmically determined computer-generated artwork. For this piece, I deleted part of the code for the original image (an astronaut floating in space) to create a glitch image. Then I processed it through coding to produce an oil painting visual effect.

www.yikoliu.com/

Hi, my name is Yara Razzouk. I am an American-Lebanese multidisciplinary designer and illustrator currently based in Los Angeles. I previously worked as a junior and experiential designer in Dubai after completing an undergraduate education at the American University of Beirut. I have freelanced for different studios and projects, all ranging from experiential design and branding to illustration and short animations, but my favorite thing about what I do is visually crafting a story. I enjoy long walks in my bedroom and sipping haphazardly forgotten cups of cold tea. 

razzouk.myportfolio.com/

I am currently focused on transmedia storytelling and branding. My work is a blurring between nostalgia and progressiveness. Nostalgia allows me to be a tourist of the past and being progressive enables me to experiment with digital technologies and see new potentials. My work is playful and strives to create a strong human connection and emotional response. My inspiration often comes from an eclectic combination of music videos, fashion, nature, and day-to-day life. In addition to conveying a message, I aim to heighten people’s emotions when they look at my work. I want to create work that makes people stop, engage, and question what is in front of them.

www.yiii.info/

I hold a BFA in Interdisciplinary Visual Arts from University of Washington and am currently an MFA Design student at the USC Roski School of Art and Design. I have always loved the outdoor lifestyle and the adventures it brings. As a graphic designer and artist currently focused on product design, I use UI/UX design to promote modern outdoor products and build digital communities that address the needs of users. I recently designed a stylish sleeping bag that is embedded with auto-warming technology and an app that helps outdoor enthusiasts make specific travel plans and gear checklists.

I have always been deeply interested in entertainment, movies, and new media. My previous internship experience at an entertainment company also allowed me to clarify my future career plan and direction. My focus is entertainment design and to understand the development of the advertising and entertainment industry in the United States and its application in practical work.

Through the project “Inner Feeling Toward Nature,” I discover and represent my inner feeling towards disaster. I want to combine my design skills with digital media. This project is also based on my personal experience. I experienced a fire in my high school. It shocked me and left a deep expression on my heart and mind. My artwork is made from video that blends photography and documentaries mixed with my personal experience and expression.

www.behance.net/yuqizhang2

My work concerns itself with the role that design plays in our representation of self. My current practice draws from personal experiences and research into others’ relationships with identity and considers the contexts of race, sexual orientation, gender, and access. Understanding that the connection with ourselves is continually advancing, I focus on uncovering the historic American and Asian influences on feeling beautiful and how it exists outside of oneself. “ID x BEAUTY” represents the cumulative ideas drawn from investigating the intersection of design, beauty, and performative identity. My present work includes self-portraits and videos that study identity’s performative nature through design. This research raises in questions related to the cultural intersectionality of beauty standards. By researching and combining other artists’ and designers’ practices and experiences, I draw informed conclusions, specifically, about design’s historical role and how it currently drives our outlook on cosmetics and the pressure beauty places on us.

Suyu Xiong is a designer and artist, an observer who tells stories that depict fragments of daily life through illustration, comics, and interactive media. By collaborating with various industries, she explores function, encourages interaction, and successfully differentiates narratives through visualization in her design work. Her secret is to keep observing the world, documenting it for use in her own stories.

www.suyuxiong.com/