On Wednesday, Oct. 8, two California Institute of the Arts alumni, artists Tuan Andrew Nguyen (Art MFA 04) and Gala Porras-Kim (Art MFA 09), were named MacArthur Fellows by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Colloquially known as the “genius grants,” fellowships are awarded to individuals who have shown exceptional originality in and dedication to their creative pursuits in varied fields including the visual arts, writing, music, science, technology, history, and health policy. Fellows are nominated anonymously by leaders in their respective fields and receive $800,000 each in unrestricted stipends.
Nguyen’s work draws on histories of communities facing intergenerational traumas of war and displacement, using moving images and material objects as repositories of memory. His projects often involve community collaboration, incorporating testimonies, artifacts, music, and folklore to consider storytelling as a tool for healing and resistance against colonial erasure.
Notable works include The Island (2017), filmed on Pulau Bidong, site of the longest-running refugee camp after the Vietnam War; The Specter of Ancestors Becoming (2019), a 4-channel installation focused on the Vietnamese-Senegalese community in Dakar; and The Unburied Sounds of a Troubled Horizon (2022), which reimagines remnants of war in Quang Tri, Vietnam, as instruments and sculptures for healing.
A co-founder of Sàn Art and The Propeller Group, Nguyen has exhibited internationally at the New Museum and Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.; San Francisco Museum of Contemporary Art; Fondació Joan Miró in Barcelona, Spain; and Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town, South Africa.
With nuance, empathy, and playfulness, Porras-Kim investigates how objects removed from their original contexts are classified, conserved, and interpreted. Her practice has included Reconstructions (2016), an installation at the Hammer Museum featuring fragmented artifacts from UCLA’s Fowler Museum; a 2019 series on La Mojarra Stela 1, an undeciphered Mesoamerican monument; and Precipitation for an Arid Landscape (2021–23), which reconnects Maya offerings from the Sacred Cenote at Chichén Itzá—now housed at Harvard’s Peabody Museum—with their spiritual and ecological origins.
More recently, in A Hand in Nature (2024), she released molecules trapped in 8,000-year-old glacial ice cores deaccessioned from the National Science Foundation, intermingling ancient air with the present day. Across projects, Porras-Kim raises powerful questions about the lives of objects, who shapes their preservation, and how their stories are told.
She is currently a visiting critic in sculpture at the Yale School of Art, and her work has been exhibited at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh; Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York; Museum of Contemporary Art Denver; Leeum Museum of Art and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul; Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico City; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
Since 1981, there have been more than 1,100 MacArthur Fellows named. The Foundation relies on three criteria for selection: exceptional creativity; promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishments which could be enabled by our support; and potential for the Fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work
CalArts alumni who previously received MacArthur Fellowships include composer and artist Raven Chacon (2023), poet and translator Don Mee Choi, artist Carrie Mae Weems (2013), artist Mark Bradford (2009), artist and curator David Wilson (2001), writer and interdisciplinary artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña (1991), and writer and performance artist Bill Irwin (1984).
Former faculty recipients of the Fellowship include writer Maggie Nelson (2016), artist Vija Celmins (1997), and playwright Suzan-Lori Parks (2001). CalArts trustee Joan Abrahamson was also named a 1985 Fellow for her work in community development.
