2026 MFA Thesis Exhibition

Not With a Bang
Ceramics, glaze
Variable dimensions. 8 x 8 in each approx.
2026

Not With a Bang (Detail)
Ceramics, glaze
8 x 8 x 7 in
2026

C for Care
Hand-built glazed ceramic, blanket, custom-made steel structure, poplar
16 x 8 x 8 in
2025

Juana Vargas Moreno is a multidisciplinary artist working in painting, sculpture and installation. Her work investigates the implications of language in human perception, the building of knowledge, the ability to establish relationship and to form kinship with those who are considered ‘others’, humans and non-humans alike. Understanding language not as a system of representation of the world, but as a practice entangled materially with it and therefore in constant change, her work questions the names, labels, categories, hierarchies, and biases—many times considered static and established— consequences of Humanism/Cartesianism.

Grounded on material explorations in ceramics, wax, sugar, wood and metal, Vargas Moreno moves between abstraction and representation, playing with ambiguity. Animals and organic elements placed in dialog with minimal structures and text in playful installations referencing toys, manipulatives and arrangements proper of education systems, while problematizing notions of care and control. While searching for bodies that occupy space, bend, expand, and sometimes even deteriorate physically due to their scarcity, her practice seeks to redirect attention to a possibility of transformation, a more empathetic way of understanding, and the need to collapse the borders and barriers that we use to keep us all separated.