Meet the Artists of ICA San Diego’s NextGen 2024 Exhibition

Balboa Park offers a glimpse into much of the art world’s past. The San Diego Museum of Art, the Mingei International Museum, the Timken… all offer a glimpse into masters both known and unknown. The future may be harder to discover.

But sometimes it’s within reach. Just steps from Mingei on El Prado, the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) is showcasing seven of the next big things on the local (and global) art scene. The NextGen program, now in its third year, was designed “to provide much-needed exhibition opportunities for artists building their careers in San Diego,” says ICA curator Jordan Karney Chaim. “NextGen is specifically for artists who have graduated from any type of art education program.”

This includes, of course, MFA holders, but graduates of community colleges and undergraduate programs are also eligible. When they do, their recent work and project proposals are presented to a jury of leading art world professionals. This year’s panel included leaders from the Seattle Art Museum, the Orange County Museum of Art, and LACE, Los Angeles’ oldest contemporary art incubator.

“I often try to remind artists that every time they apply to a call for submissions, their work is seen (by art professionals),” Chaim says. “That’s huge, and our submissions are free. No one has had to pay for that kind of exposure. It’s never a waste of time to apply.”

For those accepted, the benefits go far beyond exposure. Professional development is a key component of the program. Selected artists will participate in an artistic reflection workshop with Journal Here ICA Founder Elizabeth Rooklidge, a tour of the Balboa Art Conservation Center, and career discussions with acclaimed local artists, among other opportunities. All of this is part of the ICA’s mission to be a springboard for emerging artists.

“We’re not a destination. It’s not like you work for 50 years to one day have your work exhibited at the ICA in San Diego,” Chaim says. “We’re a laboratory. We’re a resource. We want to help artists build their careers so they can take it to the next level.”

Meet ICA San Diego’s 2024 NextGen Artists

Deanna Barahona

A first-generation SoCal artist born in Los Angeles, Deanna Barahona is a recent graduate of UC San Diego’s MFA program. The playfulness and vibrant colors of her mixed-media wall sculptures—family portraits and ephemera screen-printed on ceramic tiles—may at first betray the literal and metaphorical weight she gives these fragments of her personal archive using architectural materials.

Santiago Diaz

Santiago Diaz, a UC San Diego alumnus and the only undergraduate in this year’s class, photographs urban infrastructure and contextualizes the unsettling images by displaying them on scaffolding, grids, and other building materials. The result is sculptural pieces that feel both monumental and unstable, like the landscapes of American cities themselves.

Celeste Hernandez

Tijuana native Celeste Hernández, a recent graduate of her hometown’s Centro de la Imagen photography school, has created a photo project The Lost Houses in honor of her uncle Jesus, who died at the age of 20. She combines archival family footage and her own analog work to produce sober and moving montages that trace the contours of absence and mourning.

JAX

JAX received her MFA from the University of California, San Diego. In her work, strands of synthetic hair stretch across the walls of ICA Central, interwoven with letters and trinkets, celebrating community, customs, and markers of Black domesticity and womanhood. Many of the found objects on view in the exhibition have deep personal meaning: glasses that belonged to JAX’s grandmother, notes, and gifts from friends.

Marinta Skupin

South African-born artist and San Diego State University MFA alumna Marinta Skupin questions the ravages of climate change. A massive, multi-panel painting of the coastline is literally weakened by overwhelming data: hundreds of numbers, reflecting months of daily ocean temperature readings by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, are laser-cut into the work.

Chanell Stone

Although she hails from Los Angeles, UC San Diego MFA graduate Channell Stone’s photographs capture the natural and agricultural spaces of Mississippi and Louisiana. Powerful and contemplative, the black-and-white images—self-portraits, landscape shots, and detailed shots of flora and water—juxtapose movement and stillness, humans and nature to explore the history and memories of the Black diaspora in America.

Nathan Storey

One could spend hours studying Nathan Storey’s sprawling assemblages. The UC San Diego MFA graduate compiles queer ephemera—magazine clippings and nightclub flyers, among other things—to create massive collages punctuated by his own photographic works. The patchwork pieces contrast with Storey’s black-and-white text prints, making statements that are both sad and happy.

Images courtesy of ICA San Diego and the artists.