Meet the Student Artists at EXPO Chicago 2025

What shapes the self—and what, in turn, does the self shape? These are some of the questions approached by the SAIC EXPO 2025 booth, featuring the exhibition Self-Made: Narratives of Knowing and Being. Rather than embracing “self-made” as a bootstraps myth, the show reimagines the self as something shaped by memory, language, and ancestral presence.

Featuring film, painting, sculpture, multimedia, and works on paper created by eight graduate and undergraduate students, Self-Made was organized by School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) graduate students in the spring 2025 Advanced Curatorial Practice class taught by Lecturer Marin R. Sullivan.

Below, meet the artists and get a sneak peek at some of the art on display, plus info on more opportunities to encounter SAIC community members at EXPO.

Self-Made is co-curated by graduate students Angel Adams, Atlas Babcock, Malia Brazil, Aria Frawley, Akmaral Kulbatyrova, Sarah Laxton, Abreihona Lenihan, Charlie Nawara, MinJi Park, Arielle Schnur, and Annabel Severns.

Amin Pakparvar and Mehraneh Salimian, Gravestones’ Touch, film

Amin Pakparvar is an Iranian documentary filmmaker and film critic who has created several short films, including Death and the Dragon (2020) and Height of the Kite (2024), that address racial and gender discrimination, state violence, and environmental crises in contemporary Iranian history. These films have been screened at several Oscar-qualifying film festivals in Iran, Africa, and the US.

Mehraneh Salimian is an Iranian filmmaker, editor, and writer working across documentary, video installation, and fiction film. Her practice centers on the concept of the counter-archive, particularly in Iran, where she creates alternative narratives to challenge dominant historical accounts. Her short documentary Height of the Kite (2024) has been featured at Academy Award-qualifying film festivals and received the Best Art Piece award from the Working Artist Organization in Tacoma, Washington.

Matthew Kaufman, Dad’s Baseball Bat, 2024, glazed stoneware

Matthew Kaufman is a queer Jewish artist currently residing in Chicago. Kaufman uses clay to create theatrical sculptures exploring conversations of humor and self-discomfort. By isolating and hyperbolizing body parts, he examines the different registers in which his body is taken up and given significance.

Pedro Montilla Pineros, Despegar la sombra de tus pies (Detach the shadow from your feet), 2025, oil and distemper on fique

Pedro Montilla is a Colombian painter with a bachelor of fine arts from Universidad de los Andes. Working between Chicago and the Colombian Andes, he explores painting as a mystical being where science and magic intertwine. His work, created on fique fabric, has been exhibited in solo shows at Polícroma Galería in Medellín and in group exhibitions at ARTBO, Chili Art Projects in London, and SGR Galería.

Rachelle Fierro López, Cenitl-Maíz-Elote-Corn, 2024, weaving with cotton, dyed corn husk, and glass gem corn kernels

Rachelle Fierro López is a Latin American painter and weaver. Her artistic practice draws from her cultural and familial background, often depicting family members in distorted or surrealistic portraiture to examine their own narrative and personal experience. Recently, she has begun a new exploration into wider cultural narratives and collective histories, diving deeper into collective knowledge and what it means to be Latin American in the United States.

Winnie Szu, Kinda Lucky of You, 2025, oil on canvas

Winnie Weiyun Szu’s 司惟云 paintings, videos, and multimedia work intertwine logographic and phonetic language with abstraction. Her work emerges from the bilingual ambiguity of words and images, exploring the spaces between perception, interpretation, and connection.

Shuyuan Zhou, My Great Grandmother, My Grand Aunt, My Grandmother, My Mother and I (4 of 4), archival inkjet print

Shuyuan Zhou 周书苑 is a Chinese visual artist and poet. Her artistic passion lies mainly in the impact of patriarchal society and generational trauma on self-identity in China. In her work, she tries to combine photographic images with diverse mediums such as installation art, experimental video, and poetry.

Mauricio López F., 60625, 2024, recordings of an inhabited apartment, amplifications system, speakers, card catalog drawers, stool, steel pipes, and steel sheet

Mauricio López F. is a sound artist and music composer born in Santiago de Chile. His work explores various mediums in sound art such as sculptures, sonic assemblage, graphic scores, and performances with unconventional instruments. These works, often seen through a sardonic lens, deal with themes of privacy, translation, and social misunderstandings.

/Dialogues

In addition to the EXPO SAIC booth, many SAIC community members are involved in /Dialogues. Presented in partnership with SAIC, the /Dialogues series offers panel discussions, conversations, and provocative artistic discourse with leading artists, curators, designers, and arts professionals on the current issues that engage them.

Director Summit Part I
Thursday, April 24, 2:00–3:00 p.m.
Featuring: Laura-Caroline de Lara (Dual MA 2012)

Screening: ART21 and Collaborative Practice
Friday, April 25, 3:15–4:00 p.m.
Featuring: Stephanie and Bill Sick Professor of Fashion, Body and Garment Nick Cave, Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo aka Puppies Puppies (BA 2010), and Aliza Nisenbaum (BFA 2001, MFA 2005)

Art Critics Forum
Friday, April 25, 5:30–6:30 p.m.
Featuring: Pia Singh (MA 2017)

Korean Art Today
Saturday, April 26, 2:00–3:00 p.m.
Featuring: President Jiseon Lee Isbara

Objects in Frame: Contemporary Photography
Saturday, April 26, 5:30–6:30 p.m.
Featuring: Amanda Ross-Ho (BFA 1998)

For Those That Lived There Screening and Discussion
Sunday, April 27, 2:00–3:00 p.m.
Presented in partnership with the Gene Siskel Film Center and SAIC Alumni Engagement
Featuring: jada-amina (BFA 2020), Gene Siskel Film Center's lead curator of the Black Harvest Film Festival and Filmmaker Shawn Antoine II