The San José State University (SJSU) Master of Fine Arts 2024-2025 cohort presents their Lift Off 2025 group exhibition at The Institute of Contemporary Art San José, curated by Zoe Latzer. The group exhibition, titled Who ‘am’ I, without you? will be displayed in a two-part exhibition. Part 1 opened on April 4, 2025, at ICA San José, and the second exhibition opened on June 19, 2025.
In addition to their solo thesis exhibitions, SJSU MFA Candidates participate in a group exhibition and collaborate with MA Candidates in Art History and Visual Culture to create the annual Lift Off Catalogue. Hosted in 2025 at the ICA San José, the twelve students showcase a wide range of mediums, including painting, printmaking, drawing, sculpture, photography, digital art, and multidisciplinary installations.
Part 1: April 4th, 2025 – June 8, 2025 Participating Artists: Andrew Marovich, Chelsea Stewart, Erin de Jauregui, Mary Morse, Samantha Saldana, and Timna Naim. (Profiles in a previous post)
Part 2: June 19, 2025 – August 24, 2025 Participating Artists: Michelle Frey, Xiao Wu, Lisa Heikka-Huber, Mona Farrokhi, Sam Swenor, and Shea Windberg. (Profiles below)
Michelle Frey is a visual designer, painter, and installation artist working in San José, California, and completing her MFA at San Jose State University. Her provisional pictorial prints and sculptures are gestural extensions of her thoughts in tactile mediums, as well as site-specific exhibits. Frey vacillates between figuration, observation, and abstraction in paint, paper, wood, and pewter. Her work responds to the effects of current events, unseen caregiving, and labor that keep families and the environment functioning. Her current art practice focuses on interactively sharing aesthetic rituals of processing grief and the gravity of loss through various materials.
Xiao Wu is a digital media artist currently pursuing a Master of Fine Arts at San Jose State University. His skill set spans various areas, including coding, real-time interactive multimedia programming, web interactions, and AI.
He reflects on subtle changes in societal norms and the impact of technology on daily life. By experimenting with new technologies and aesthetics, he aims to translate his thoughts into tangible objects and spaces while also exploring and redefining the boundaries of digital media.
By integrating cutting-edge technologies into his art, Xiao aims to push the boundaries of digital media and engage audiences in meaningful experiences.
Lisa Heikka-Huber is a transdisciplinary artist working on her MFA in Spatial Art at San José State University. Born in Los Angeles, CA, Lisa comes from a family of accomplished sculptors. She moved to the Washington, D.C. area for high school before returning to California to pursue her studies in glass blowing at Shasta College. She holds a BFA in Sculpture and Small Metals, a BA in Political Science focused on global water policy, a Museum and Gallery Practices certificate, a minor in Art History and in Scientific Diving from Cal Poly Humboldt.
In addition to her MFA studies, Lisa is pursuing an MA in Social Sciences through Cal Poly Humboldt’s Environment and Community graduate program, where she continues to explore the intersections of art, science, and environmental advocacy.
Shea Windberg is a contemporary photographer who engages with an experimental and process-driven approach to the film medium. Blurring the boundaries between photography and abstract painting, Windberg uses analog techniques such as reprinting, re-photographing, burning, and chemical manipulation to create richly textured, highly caustic images that explore memory, anxiety, materiality, and impermanence. Their work challenges traditional notions of photography as a documentary medium, instead emphasizing the transformative potential of material process and the instability of perception. Windberg conveys a chaotic, anxious, and raw condition of being through the deployment of abstracted, deteriorating images that consist of industrial landscapes, fragmented bodies, and a world on the precipice of consuming itself.
Through digital media, graphic design, and professional knowledge of corporate marketing and communications, Sam Swenor builds graphic systems that take a stand, hold information, educate others, and communicate visual messages through digital and physical touchpoints. Her work operates in the space of institutional critique as it pertains to artifacts that have been displaced through time, with a focus on Hellenic antiquity.
Sam Swenor currently works at eBay as Lead Designer, Global Communications and as a Lecturer at San José State in the Department of Design. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design from Chapman University in 2017, and she graduated with her Master of Fine Arts in Digital Media Art from San José State University in the fall of 2024.
Mona Farrokhi is a multidisciplinary artist and designer whose work explores visual noise, sensory distortion, and interactive technology. Trained in industrial design and based in the Bay Area by way of Tehran, she blends procedural visuals, projection mapping, and spatial systems to investigate how perception breaks down—how glitches, hallucinations, and interference shape self-image.
Her installations utilize tools such as TouchDesigner, StreamDiffusion, and Kinect sensors to track bodies, process image data, and fragment reality in real-time. Projects like DOYOUSEEitNOW and The NOISE I See examine neurological and optical phenomena such as visual snow and derealization.
Her approach is both technical and personal—built by hand, wired from scratch, and shaped by feedback, distortion, and the tension between presence and misrecognition.
Growing up in Saigon—now Ho Chi Minh City—Vinh G. Nguyen was the kid who preferred to be alone. He cherished his time painting with watercolors and oils and sketching fashion ideas. When he was 10, he immigrated with his parents to the United States. Despite the challenge of learning English late in elementary school, his daily routines were sweetened by afternoons at the library, where he gathered books on arts and crafts. In the evenings, while his cousins played video games, Vinh drew deeper into his inner world, making sense of it with just a pencil and paper. The desire to develop his artistry was instinctual.
In high school, he participated in choir and drama for the first time. That’s where he found friends—some of whom he stays in touch with to this day. Yet while at San José State University, Vinh found he was a late bloomer in the world of theater.
He remembered talking to a friend and sharing, “I always felt like I’m one step behind all of my peers in the audition room who had been training since they were like two.” But Vinh’s friend pointed out that his passion to catch up was what drove Vinh’s career forward.
And his friend’s words were true. Vinh took enough classes in the musical theater department that he was only a few upper-division courses from majoring in it. So, along with his major in hospitality, Vinh graduated with a BA in musical theater.
“I feel like my cultural identity is now my superpower.” -Vinh G. Nguyen
For a few years afterward, Vinh worked as a freelance actor and an elementary school drama teacher. His discovery of theater informed his approach. Growing up in an Asian household, making a living as an artist had never been in the picture. But his goal was clear. He stated: “Number one, do more of this art stuff, and then two, share it with the world.”
He continued to share that he wanted to do whatever he could “to spread that joy with the next generation.”
He wanted to take his passion further. Showing his family that he could make a living while also making a big impact, he pursued an MFA in musical theater at San Diego State University and then taught collegiate-level drama. When the pandemic pushed everyone online, his unique pathway became vital.
In 2020, as the world contended with injustice and change, the theater community pushed for better practices as well. “The We See You White American Theater movement came out of the Black Lives Matter [movement],” Vinh explained. “We called out all the white theater companies that [were] not doing the work.”
To support the changes for anti-racist theater systems, Vinh became an equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) consultant and helped local theaters rebuild from the ground up. These initiatives informed how companies should treat actors, pay their staff, and facilitate conflicts.
Vinh also worked as a casting director. “That’s where I felt I was able to go in and make a direct impact in my community,” he emphasized. He sat on plenty of boards and EDI committees, but casting allowed him to influence the process directly. “Instead of bringing in what the director [wanted], I would also present three other actors whom they wouldn’t even think of,” he explained. “You challenge the director with, ‘Well, they did great. Why didn’t you pick them?’ ” He set specific goals for each show, aiming to have a certain percentage of the cast be from marginalized communities.
As live theater returned, Vinh continued his EDI consulting work, which was in high demand. But the downside was being pigeonholed and losing out on work as an artist. So Vinh adjusted his strategy. He marketed himself as a director with EDI experience. “If you want me for my EDI [experience], then just hire me as a director and everything will come with it,” he said.
Leading with that intention, Vinh began to direct for local theaters. Directing was as fulfilling as he had hoped, because it was relational and relied on a clear vision. He shared, “All the theaters that I have directed for are theaters that I have acted for. And it has to be a show that I have a very strong artistic vision for, where I come in and say, ‘This is why I want to do the show now and at your theater.’ ”
In 2023, Vinh became the managing director of Chopsticks Alley Art, which is a southeast Asian arts organization that commissioned him for the play Tales of Ancient Vietnam. This play examines the ideal of cultural authenticity through the lens of a second-generation Vietnamese American and debuted as a staged reading in 2024.
This was not just about his success as a playwright, but also as an artist taking power in his identity. As a young actor, he used to intentionally stray away from “cultural” work such as this play. “I wanted to prove that I could do the ‘normal work,’ ” he remembered. “I had to fight to be in the same room as five other white actors to read for a role that I didn’t even care much for.” The stories he did care about were being told by the wrong people in the American theater landscape, well-intentioned as they may have been.
At this point in his career and life, Vinh has the triplethreat ability to tell these stories himself through his vision as the director or through his own creation as a playwright. In his own words: “I feel like my cultural identity is now my superpower.”
The San José State University (SJSU) Master of Fine Arts 2024-2025 cohort presents their Lift Off 2025 group exhibition at The Institute of Contemporary Art San José, curated by Zoe Latzer. The group exhibition, titled Who ‘am’ I, without you? will be displayed in a two-part exhibition, which opened on April 4, 2025, at ICA San José, with the second exhibition to follow in summer 2025.
In addition to their solo thesis exhibitions, SJSU MFA Candidates participate in a group exhibition and collaborate with MA Candidates in Art History and Visual Culture to create the annual Lift Off Catalogue. Hosted in 2025 at the ICA San José, the twelve students showcase a wide range of mediums, including painting, printmaking, drawing, sculpture, photography, digital art, and multidisciplinary installations.
Zoë Latzer, Curator and Director of Public Programs at ICA San José, presents a question from Judith Butler’s Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence: Who ‘Am’ I Without You? as the title for the San José State University 2025 MFA exhibition. In the context of the Anthropocene and the sixth extinction—a time defined by both devastation and interconnection- the MFA graduates all explore and grapple with their understanding of being artists during a time of technological advancements and socio-political turmoil.
Andrew Marovich is an MFA in Spatial Art whose work addresses questions of process, puzzles, and riddles. He is a skilled craftsman and mixes media, but always comes back to working with hand-done metalworking processes.
Chelsea Stewart was born in 1997 in San Mateo County, CA. She lives in San Mateo and works in Palo Alto, CA. Stewart is currently attending San José State University while working towards her MFA in Spatial Arts. Stewart completed a residency in the Cubberley Artist Studio Program in Palo Alto, CA, and currently works as the Gallery Manager at the Pamela Walsh Gallery in downtown Palo Alto.
She was a 2022 Content Emerging Artist Awardee and featured in Content Magazine’s issue 14.3, “Perform,” published by SVCreates, as well as in issue 12.4.
Erin de Jauregui is an MFA Candidate in Photography who focuses his work on time, place, and storytelling. His work takes the viewer on a journey to see the world through an unimaginable perspective. He will be showing photographs that challenge perceptions and tell innovative stories.
Mary Morse is an MFA candidate in Spatial Arts at San José State University, working in various mediums while exploring texture, color, and memory in her work. Her interdisciplinary approach enables her to create work that is unique, introspective, and innovative. She is showcasing work that combines soft materials and rigid forms in felt, incorporating painting and metalwork into her installations.
Samantha Saldana is a lens-based interdisciplinary artist whose scholarship explores community social justice issues, identity, family relationships, and intersectionality. Saldana is a graduate of the Visual and Public Art Department at California State University, Monterey Bay, and is currently an MFA candidate in the Photography Program at San Jose State University.
Saldana’s work engages accessibility to arts education, advocacy, and mentorship opportunities.
Timna Naim is an MFA candidate in Spatial Arts whose work is playful, tactical, and socially engaging. They work primarily in clay and utilize performance, social practice, and experimental glazing techniques to make the fantastical tangible. See their performance art, ceramics, sculpture, and installation at ICA San Jose.
