Events and exhibitions
We invite you to be an active part of our vibrant creative community.
Explore our events and exhibitions
An education in art goes beyond building knowledge and technical skills, it’s about finding one’s voice, igniting curiosity, connecting with others, making meaning of the present and discovering a place in the world. It is important to celebrate successes together because the experiences and relationships one creates here will inform the rest of their life.
ASU Events
Exhibitions
Garden | Thesis Exhibition by Mehrdad Mirzaie
Thursday – Saturday | 12 to 5 p.m. | First and third Fridays of the month | 6 to 9 p.m. | Closed Sunday – Wednesday and university holidaysApril 17 to April 26 | Northlight Gallery
Opening reception | April 18 | 6 to 9:00 p.m.
"Garden" comprises thousands of amateur photographs sourced from digital archives and social media accounts, transferred onto glass. Many of these images are manipulated and stripped of names or any contextual information. They depict individuals who lost their lives, were forcibly disappeared or arrested due to the socio-political conditions in Iran from the Islamic Revolution of February 1979 to the present. This archive/anti-archive includes personal photographs from family albums or moments of everyday life, with the photographers remaining unknown. It is an anti-archive because it lacks the conventional qualities of a functional archive—it cannot serve as a reliable source of information, as it is marked by missing data, gaps and erasures.
Within Iranian culture, the idea of a garden is deeply tied to the concept of a cemetery—a resting place where life and death coexist and where memory is simultaneously preserved and erased. It becomes a metaphor for both life (through its vibrant, cultivated nature) and death (through the resting bodies beneath the soil), reflecting the tension between presence and absence, remembrance and forgetting.
Image credit: Mehrdad Mirzaie.
BACKLOT | Thesis exhibition
Thursday – Saturday | 12 to 5 p.m. | First and third Fridays | 6 to 9 p.m. | Closed Sunday – Wednesday and university holidaysApril 17 to May 3 | Step Gallery
Opening reception | April 18 | 6 to 9 p.m.
“BACKLOT” is a solo MFA thesis exhibition from Nicole Ponsart, a current MFA candidate with the School of Art working predominantly in ceramics. The installation is used to confront the paradoxical relationship between the tourist gaze and the commodification of landscape through the creation of a modular, human-scale ceramic canyon. The exhibition is positioned to allow viewers the space to interrogate and recognize the artificial choreography of how nature is often displayed for consumption — as marketable objects of desire, aestheticized and ultimately disconnected from their histories.
Drawing from the romanticized imagery of the American Southwest, the installation is comprised of large-scale sculptures created from 100% recycled material collected from around the greater metro Phoenix Area. The forms are intended as a mirror of how we encounter place in the age of tourism through partial glimpses, controlled movements and surface impressions. Embedded with the intimacy of a historically physical, elemental, craft-based practice, such as ceramics, its production process is a reflection of the intention taken to take a slower, more hands-on approach to a subject so often flattened by spectacle.
This metaphorical layering illustrates the slow erosion of ecological practices, knowledge systems and ways in which we learn to care for each other and the spaces we inhabit. What happens when a place is reduced to a prop, a backdrop for our pre-packaged experiences?
Image credit: @natejean @mrdadmirzaie
Ghosts of Girls I Could've Been & Once Was
Monday – Thursday | 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. | Fridays | 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. | Closed on weekends and university holidaysApril 14 to 25 | Harry Wood Gallery
Opening reception | April 15 | 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.
“Ghosts of Girls I Could’ve Been and Once Was” explores the intricate interplay between personal identity, societal expectations and the archetypes that define the female experience. Rooted in both my own struggles with body image and witnessing the women in my life grapple with unattainable beauty standards, I use self-portraiture as a means to interrogate how our bodies become both deeply personal and socially constructed. The transformative impact of a severe car accident further forced me to confront vulnerability head-on, splintering my sense of self and deepening my inquiry into the body as a site of both fragility and strength. By employing the concept of the persona, I turn my own image into a tool for exploration, revealing the tension between how we see ourselves and how we are perceived.
I engage with art history through techniques of exaggeration, elongation and historical reference, reworking traditional representations of the female form. My work deliberately disrupts familiar narratives by replacing canonical subjects with my own image, inviting viewers to confront the distortions imposed by societal ideals. Figures in my paintings, adorned in sheer, decorative garments and bold makeup, challenge conventional portrayals and expose the mechanisms through which femininity is both celebrated and constrained. Through controlled interplay of opacity and transparency, my surfaces become layered narratives, mirroring the complexity of identity and inviting viewers to reimagine the female body as a space of active self-definition rather than passive objectification.
Relic
Monday – Thursday | 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Fridays | 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. | Closed on weekends and university holidaysApril 28 to May 2 | Harry Wood Gallery
Opening reception | April 29 | 5 to 7 p.m.
“Relic” is a BFA group exhibition that examines the lasting impression works of art leave behind. The art object becomes a relic of the time it was made, of the artist’s life, and of the art process itself. Through printmaking, drawing, painting, photography, video and performance, the collections shown represent the individual artists’ intentions and desires in creating art that will withstand time. The artworks themselves explore the meaning of relics, focusing on dead or past bodies, fragments of the body and weathered materials. The featured artists are Chandler Ellerbusch, Marit Fellner, Omar Ismail, Thane Kyu, Camille Misty, Alejandra Ramirez and Kaden Robb.
Image courtesy of the artists.
Ephemeral: Where Memory Shifts
Monday – Thursday | 12 to 5 p.m. Friday | 12 to 3 p.m. | Closed on weekends and university holidaysApril 28 to May 2 | Gallery 100
Opening reception | April 29 | 5 to 7 p.m.
Ephemeral moments belong to the crumple of a paper, spinning till you get dizzy, solidifying forms, a vulnerability in emotions, femininity, a distant echo, solitude, an anxious thought, a temporary art installation.
Gallery 100 is pleased to present “Ephemeral: Where Memory Shifts," an inspiring exhibition exploring the transient nature of memory, identity and time. This multidisciplinary show invites visitors to experience a rich collection of immersive installations and artworks that delve into how memory is fluid, subjective and often fleeting.
This exhibit features the works of Allie Thurgood, Charlotte Duncan, Elise Hurtado, Ethan Nguyen, Jasmine Gould, Kate Arford, Tracy Starlight and Trinity Brant. Each piece challenges the conventional understanding of memory, presenting it as an ever-shifting, ephemeral phenomenon influenced by perception, emotion and external forces.
Image courtesy of the artists.
Between Worlds
Monday – Thursday | 12 to 5 p.m. Friday | 12 to 3 p.m. | Closed on weekends and university holidaysApril 21 to 25 | Gallery 100
Opening reception | April 22 | 5 to 7 p.m.
Gallery 100 is excited to present “Between Worlds,” a BFA group exhibition that features Aubrey McAlister, Brooke Speer, Emily Broach, Fish, Gabby Bartolini, Koell Smith, Magdass Richard and Victoria Gomez.
In a world in which we are constantly bombarded with rigidity and fixed definitions, imagination, curiosity, and wonder are said to be confined to childhood. This, coupled with the intense pace of everyday life, restricts us from acknowledging and embracing the extraordinary, both inside and outside the physical realm. “Between Worlds” navigates this exploration through 2D and 3D works, with subject matter spanning from the ethereal to the earthly. By taking a step back to revel in these concepts, it becomes possible to mend the disconnect between ourselves and fascination. There is always more than what meets the eye—we just need to relearn how to look.
Image courtesy of the artists.
