2026 University of Washington MFA + MDes Thesis Exhibition
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
MAY 16 - JUNE 14, 2026
Each year, the Henry presents the University of Washington's School of Art + Art History + Design Master of Fine Arts and Master of Design Thesis Exhibition. Throughout their programs, fine arts and design students work with advisers and other artists to develop advanced techniques, expand concepts, discuss critical issues, and emerge with a vision and direction for their own work.
The 2026 University of Washington MFA + MDes Thesis Exhibition is organized by Trevor Goosen, Fabricator and Preparator, and Jackson Irvine, Exhibition Tech.
Exhibitions at the Henry are made possible through the generous support of our annual sponsors, 4Culture and ArtsFund.
ARTISTS + DESIGNERS
Stephanie Alacon
Master of Fine Art
Stephanie Alacon is an artist based in Seattle, Washington. Largely working in sculpture and installation, they are interested in creating precarious compositions that hold a sense of tension, often pushing materials like glass and ceramics, incrementally to their limits, past their breaking point, and employing rituals of care and repair to breathe new life into these structures. This cyclical way of making mimics a natural rhythm we all experience, and is fertile ground to explore what it means when we/things/systems start to break down, and how care and attention affects transformation and healing. Stephanie is currently pursuing a Masters in Fine Arts, at the University of Washington.
TOP
Dahae Cheon
Master of Design
Dahae Cheon is an industrial and CMF designer whose work delves into the innate conceptual value of objects through iterative crafting and a deep-dive approach. Driven by an interest in aligning context, her practice spans material experiments, furniture, mass-production design, UX, and design strategy. Currently an MDes candidate at the University of Washington, her research bridges hardware materiality and digital systems, grounding speculative perspectives into real-world applications.
Her work asks: In shaping our dialogue with conversational AI, how must interaction and interface evolve? Dahae critiques the frictionless binary plane and the passive, linear scroll of modern software. To address this, she develops a "somatic gesture vocabulary," utilizing the tactile resistance and Z-axis depth of stretchable textiles to capture the implicit nuances of human intent. By materializing intangible AI processes into spatial nodes, her interactive prototypes maintain unbroken cognitive continuity. Dahae designs to empower users to physically navigate and sculpt the generative process in real-time, ultimately reclaiming the authorial agency lost to the screen.
Dahae Cheon, field — UI Demo, 2026, digital screenshot, 350×280mm. Photo credit: Yeha Chung, Lucas Capkovic.
Li-Yuan Chiou
Master of Design
Designer from Taiwan. I make things, write when I can, and wonder a lot.
Tan-sûn ê lâng, puânn-suann-kuè-niá lâi kàu lí bīn-chêng.
LEFT
Li-Yuan Chiou, Emotional Landscape. Courtesy of the artist.
LEFT
Li-Yuan Chiou, Finding balance. Courtesy of the artist.
TOP
Jeff Jiang, COVER. Courtesy of the artist.
BOTTOM
Jeff Jiang, SHOES. Courtesy of the artist.
Jeff
Jiang
Master of Design
Jeff Jiang is a footwear designer, originally from China and currently based in Seattle. He has over four years of experience working across adidas Originals in Shanghai, adidas headquarters in Herzogenaurach, Xtep, and Michael Kors, designing for both lifestyle, performance footwear, and experimental fashion design. He has studied at the Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology in Footwear Design and at the University of Washington. His work has been developed and launched across Asia, Europe, and North America, including collaborative projects with professional athletes.
Positioning footwear as a bridge between industrial design and fashion, Jiang approaches design through a tension between restraint and instinct—balancing rational construction with expressive form. His practice explores the relationship between history, modernity, and future possibilities in footwear design. By drawing from historical references while engaging contemporary tools and materials, he creates experimental forms that challenge conventional boundaries and push toward a more forwardlooking design language.
LEFT
Jeff Jiang, LOOKBOOK FRONT. Courtesy of the artist.
RIGHT
Jeff Jiang, LOOKBOOK BACK. Courtesy of the artist.
ABOVE, Victoria Mackender, we are creatures of this world
Victoria Mackender
Master of Fine Art
Victoria Mackender is an interdisciplinary artist and educator based in Seattle, Washington. Working across painting and expanded media, her practice explores grief, memory, and the instability of the self. Grief collapses chronology and exposes the fluidity of the self. The body becomes interdimensional, caught between past and present, inhabiting multiple realities at once. Her paintings return to these frozen states performing excavations that are both personal and mythic. Her process begins with memory and color. She lays down thinned washes of color on the floor building unstable fields that she draws into with extended tools. Figures emerge then are smeared and pushed until they begin to slip, bodies fold inward, dissolve into the ground, or hover at the edge of disappearance. Limbs, torsos, animal forms, and hollowed silhouettes recur alongside fragmented landscapes. Mackender uses materials such as organza, transparent oil paint, glycerin, and wax that behave like time itself: drifting, eroding, resisting permanence.
ABOVE, Victoria Mackender, shared edges (2)
ABOVE
Victoria Mackender, going under LEFT
Victoria Mackender, shapeshifting
ABOVE
Alex Moni-Sauri, Ear of the Worm, 2025, plaster cloth, paper pulp, raw wool, 4’ × 3’ × 3.5’.
Photo credit: Andrew Roibal
Alex Moni-Sauri
Master of Fine Art
Alex Moni-Sauri is a multidisciplinary artist and writer working in sculpture, drawing, and poetry. Her practice engages with ideas of animism, human/animal relationships, and the mutable life of symbols. Her current body of work explores the premise that human language is a living material of the world like grass, gnats, dust, or carbon.
She earned her BFA in Interdisciplinary Sculpture from the Maryland Institute College of Art and her MFA in Poetry from the University of Washington. She is the author of From the Shore, a chapbook of poems and drawings published by GASHER Press.
LEFT
Alex MoniSauri, Story, 2025, vine charcoal and sidewalk chalk, 6’ × 8’.
Photo credit: Jordan Horton
ABOVE
Alex Moni-Sauri, No Further?, 2026, vine charcoal, wall paint, text excerpted from The Writing Life by Annie Dillard, dimensions variable. Photo credit: Jordan Horton
LEFT
Alex Moni-Sauri, The Shadow of the Arrow That Has Hit Its Target (detail), 2026, polymer clay, drum stand, wool, cotton, dimensions variable. Photo credit: Jordan Horton
LEFT Oscar Pearson, Bound, 2025, oil on canvas, 72" × 51".
Courtesy of the artist.
Oscar Pearson
Master of Fine Art
Oscar Pearson (b. 1993, California) is a painter. The subjects of his paintings are often placed in suburban settings such as parks, domestic interiors, and yards, places the artist is familiar with. Pearson’s paintings explore notions of psychological, physical, and spiritual freedom. He does this by depicting things he encounters, reflecting on personal experiences, and re-telling stories he has heard from family. Pearson is interested in play as a fundamental element of human and animal life that disrupts the monotony of life. He considers play in the formal arrangement of his compositions and in the subject matter depicted.
Pearson began his art career in community college while working as an artist assistant. Pearson later received a BFA in Drawing and Painting from California State University Long Beach (2021). He co-founded and co-managed The Place on PCH, an arts coalition that for years offered an international artist residency program in Oceano, California. Pearson’s mural, “Generosity” is a part of the permanent art collection at Cal Poly University, San Luis Obispo, CA. Last summer he continued his site-specific work as he took part in the Tropical Lab residency at Lasalle College of The Arts in Singapore. Pearson has exhibited in various group shows in Southern California and Seattle, WA. Currently he is completing a Master’s in Fine Arts degree in Drawing and Painting at The University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, USA (2026).
ABOVE
Oscar Pearson, Fairplay, 2026, oil on canvas, 72” × 60”.
Courtesy of the artist.
ABOVE
Oscar Pearson, Tits “R” 4 Kids, 2024, oil on canva s, 20” × 20”. Courtesy of the artist.
LEFT
Oscar Pearson, Juego, 2026, oil on canvas, 72” x 58”. Courtesy of the artist.
TOP
Chave Pichardo, smile now, cry later, 2026, two coat racks, extension cord, video, bucket filled with sand, the artists’ clothes from 2008 to present, clothespins, dimensions variable.
Photo courtesy of the artist.
BOTTOM
Chave Pichardo, smile now, cry later, 2026 video still. Courtesy of the artist.
Chave Pichardo
Master of Fine Art
Care within an institutional space has become almost nonexistent in recent times, but what if we made this a priority? Chave Pichardo is exploring this question through creating participatory installations with video and sculpture using everyday objects and second-hand materials. Through the lens of ritual, space, and queer time, Pichardo’s work focuses on access, care, and community.
Chave Pichardo is originally from Southern California and currently resides in Seattle, Washington.They received their BFA from California State University of Fullerton in Creative Photography and Experimental Media. They also received their Associate in Art from Mira Costa College in Oceanside, California. Pichardo has shown work throughout Southern California and Seattle and they have participated in zine festivals in Tijuana, Mexico, San Diego, California, Los Angeles, California, and Seattle, Washington.
LEFT Chave Pichardo, looking for my happy lamp, 2026, cushions, picnic blanket, drop cloth, tablecloth, orchid dirt, lavender, cactus piňatas, felted cactus, watering can cactus, lights, rug, paper, performance and installation, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy of the artist.
LEFT
Chave Pichardo, (pending), 2025, two couches, rug, coffee table, books in rotation, tablecloth, fan, lace curtains, window screen, video, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy of the artist.
BELOW
Chave Pichardo, (pending), 2025, video still. Courtesy of the artist.
ABOVE
Andrew Roibal, Kaacha M’iitra, 2026, Skate deck and adhesive vinyl, 33 × 8.25 in. Courtesy of the artist.
Andrew Roibal
Master of Fine Art
Guw’aadzi gai dawaa haupa. Andrew sush dá dyaami wassht’i. Ó’sahsh hanu shush dá. Su’siisru Miitra, hinum’e w’ee Aak’um’e.
My project is called Pulling and Pushing.
These works are a part of my project around the convergence of Native American and skateboarding culture. I am mixing photo mediums like silver gelatin or Polaroids and traditional painting or wood working, with the language of today’s skate scene. Tradition and culture are not stagnant, they flow continuously like a river, adapting and growing with the land around it. This mix of traditional and alternative culture shows the immense love and community that has sprouted in the face of colonialism, on and off the Rez. Almost every board I have made I have given away for free to other Natives, to enable them to keep enriching local communities and to take up the space they deserve. Themes such as reciprocity and kincentricity are central to my way of life and artmaking, and these are throughlines in both Native and skating communities. When we combine both, we become living embodiments of resilience.
LEFT Andrew Roibal, Heem’e, 2026, Skate deck and adhesive vinyl, 33 × 33 in.
Courtesy of the artist.
ABOVE
Andrew Roibal, Sh'atrə, 2025, Archival print. Courtesy of the artist.
RIGHT
Andrew Roibal, Amu, 2024, Polaroid print and acrylic paint. Courtesy of the artist.
ABOVE
Ryan Walters, my dr says something is wrong with me…, 2026, acrylic on canvas, 6 × 6 ft.
Courtesy of the artist.
Ryan Walters
Master of Fine Art
Ryan Walters is a painter based in Seattle, Washington whose work examines how digital culture shapes perception, memory, and identity. His paintings translate the experience of scrolling and image overload into layered, materially dense compositions where fragments of internet imagery, text, and art historical references collide. Across his work, figures and visual languages merge and destabilize one another. A Christ-like figure may appear alongside a distorted Sims character, while echoes of The Birth of Venus surface through saturated color fields. Elsewhere, meme-like grins, slogans, and animal forms drift through the compositions, resisting fixed meaning or hierarchy. Through this accumulation, Walters builds unstable visual environments that reflect the fragmented nature of contemporary image consumption. Walters works primarily in acrylic, developing smooth but densely layered surfaces through projection, painting, and repainting. His color palette, marked by gritty greens, bruised purples, nicotine yellows, and artificial pinks, draws from both digital interfaces and the physical effects of overstimulation. His process slows and materializes images that are typically fast and disposable. He is currently completing his MFA in Painting at the University of Washington and has exhibited regularly in Seattle.
ABOVE
Ryan Walters, anyways, enjoy the kitteh :3, 2026, acrylic on canvas. Courtesy of the artist.
ABOVE
Ryan Walters, kinkadian rhythm, 2026, acrylic, glitter, tinsel, and christmas lights on canvas. Courtesy of the artist.
