Art-watchers in Santa Barbara understand that one reliable time and place for finding more challenging, mold-breaking, and potentially trailblazing work is out at UCSB, come the end of each academic year. In the current short-run 2026 MFA Thesis Exhibition: Fault Lines, at the UCSB AD&A Museum through June 7, this year’s crop of MFA candidates come out to play and show concepts and wares, in an officially sanctioned and strictly non-commercial context.
As has been the case in past years, the fruits of their MFA-timed labors are once again enticing, in multiple directions. In the curatorial text by Alida Jekabson and Kristin Yinger, a connective thematic tissue between the seven artists here is suggested through the observation that “collectively, their work asks visitors to examine their own perceptions of fault lines as not only splits but also openings in existing, constructed, and imagined realms.”
Definitions and any sense of an umbrella agenda are suitably broad and loose enough to encompass the inherent distinctions among the artists here. It’s a general trend in the MFA shows, connected but not bound by a restrictive theme. Virtual reality sits well with stuffed and encoded animals, loaded grocery store allusions, and Iranian wartime angst via weavings. It’s the MFA way.
