The Savannah College of Art and Design presents SCAD deFINE Art 2026

The celebrated signature event features thoughtful programming and compelling exhibitions at the SCAD Museum of Art, highlighting the significance of artistic expression globally.

SAVANNAH AND ATLANTA, GEORGIA — The Savannah College of Art and Design presents the 17th edition of SCAD deFINE ART, the university's annual series of exhibitions, talks, and special presentations celebrating influential leaders in contemporary art. This year's programming, presented Feb. 23–26, includes conversations with today's most prominent artists, including SCAD deFINE ART 2026 honoree Laurie Anderson, about their practices and works on view.

Eight new exhibitions at the SCAD Museum of Art offer a poignant lens on international creators who are challenging conventions of storytelling and reframing our relationship to media. Featured artists include Farah Al Qasimi, Laurie Anderson, Mona Bozorgi (SCAD M.F.A., photography, 2018), Eva Jospin, Anish Kapoor, and Max Lamb. Exhibitions programming also includes the group shows In Character and Personified, as well as a showcase of select works by SCAD students at Alexander Hall.

This year's cohort of world-renowned practitioners is representative of the global artistic community, drawing from cultures across geographies including France, India, Iran, the U.K., the United Arab Emirates, and the U.S.

Across more than five decades, SCAD deFINE ART honoree Laurie Anderson (b. 1947, Glen Ellyn, Ill.) has pushed boundaries and defied categorization, pioneering the experimental use of technology, music, spoken word, and moving image in performances and installations. With All in Your Head, Anderson traverses time and space, bringing together the written word, projected images, and the visualization of alternate realities to question what is remembered, what is spoken, and what is possible.

Working in mediums of photography, film, and music, Farah Al Qasimi (b. 1991, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates) interrogates the hierarchies of information and emotion inherent to the internet, embracing a multiplicity of screens and printing techniques including large-scale vinyl imagery. In Psychic Repair, she presents highly saturated images exploring rituals of self-presentation and their ties to identity, memory, and belief formation, informed by her girlhood in the UAE and experiences of womanhood in the U.S.

SCAD alum Mona Bozorgi (b. 1979, Tehran, Iran) uses experimental photographic processes to explore the correlation between representation and performativity, focusing on the materialization of bodies and its impact on the construction and production of identities. Expanding on her ongoing series Threads of Freedom in the exhibition Strain and Strand, she centers the role of imagery in Iranian women's self-representation and performance of gender amid broader sociopolitical movements in the country.

Presenting her debut U.S. museum exhibition Into the Woods, Eva Jospin (b. 1975, Paris) fascinates viewers with the range of her creative expression, from her signature sculpted forests and architectural follies to her richly embroidered landscape tapestries and her most intricate, delicate renderings. Embracing the captivating mysteries of nature and ruins alike, her singular practice encourages us to contemplate contemporary materials and our place in history too.

An eminent artist recognized for his peerless international renown, Anish Kapoor (b. 1954, Mumbai, India) demonstrates his incomparable creative outpouring in Earth Sky on Red Ground, the first museum exhibition in the U.S. devoted entirely to his painting practice. Characterized by sensuous brushwork and an immersive scale, Kapoor's paintings simultaneously emphasize our physical existence and the metaphysical inner worlds we share.

Max Lamb (b. 1980, St. Austell, U.K.) highlights his versatility as a designer and the thoroughness of his exploration across mediums with Elements, showcasing objects in a range of materials including metal, stone, wood, polystyrene, and textile. While the forthrightness of his methods often belies the meaningful nuance of his problem-solving, Lamb demonstrates the overarching ethos of his practice, confronting some of the most complex challenges of our era guided by an unparalleled inquisitiveness that unifies his approach.

Many of the university's top-ranked degree programs — such as sequential art, furniture design, illustration, painting, photography, and sound design — are represented in this year's exhibitions and programming. SCAD students and community members are invited to connect with the artists and special guests in free events including talks, master classes, keynote lectures, and public art experiences.

An opening reception will take place in Savannah at the SCAD Museum of Art, Tuesday, Feb. 24, at 5:30 p.m. For more information, visit scad.edu/defineart.
 

Featured exhibitions

Group exhibition
Personified | Nov. 26, 2025–May 3, 2026
Personified presents selections from the SCAD Museum of Art Permanent Collection that focus on the ways artists hybridize, morph, caricaturize or embellish their figures to imbue them with characteristics typically unrelated to the body but which ultimately emphasize their humanity. Exhibiting modes of personification from animals to common objects, the shifting body manifests first through metamorphosis, which sees the subject in the process of transformation, typically as a metaphor for broader themes like love, alienation, hidden fears, or growth. Several works explore the notion of the composite, in which the figure is presented as an amalgamation of an array of cultural signifiers as a reflection of the social conditions of the artist's time. Lastly, the adorned body is celebrated in works in which the subject's identifying features are obscured through ornamentation, offering transcendent, joyful embodiments of empowerment.

Farah Al Qasimi
Psychic Repair | Jan. 30–June 7, 2026
In Psychic Repair, photographer and musician Farah Al Qasimi (b. 1991, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates) activates the SCAD Museum of Art's façade vitrines and an interior gallery through the play of scale and dimensionality. Informed by her girlhood in the UAE and experiences of womanhood in the U.S., Al Qasimi produces highly saturated images that explore rituals of self-presentation and their ties to identity, memory, and belief formation. Across photographic installations and music videos, she layers these images in a style reminiscent of early internet pop-up ads and department store displays, shifting fluidly between analog and digital modes. Patterns, textures, and shadows become conduits for fantasy and phantasm in her documentary photographs, while her music videos transform jump-rope rhymes, spoken poetry, and punk rock songs into prophetic mantras. Throughout the exhibition, the supernatural operates as a metaphor for the unseen, transient forces of contemporary beauty and fashion culture that shape how we see, feel, and behave.

Max Lamb
Elements | Feb. 2–June 7, 2026
Showcasing numerous objects in a range of materials, including metal, stone, wood, polystyrene, and textile, this exhibition highlights Max Lamb's (b. 1980, St. Austell, U.K.) versatility as a designer and the thoroughness of his exploration across mediums. Lamb's boundless creative practice has become one of the most well-regarded of his generation, noted for his ceaseless inventiveness. The forthrightness of his work — and the efficiency of the methods through which he creates it — at times belies his extremely nuanced problem-solving and the meaningful ways he confronts some of the most complex challenges of our era. While the exhibition organizes these works by material to highlight the range and depth of his work, the slippages between each category demonstrate the overarching ethos of an artist who is guided by an unparalleled inquisitiveness that unifies his approach.

Eva Jospin
Into the Woods | Feb. 4–June 7, 2026
In her debut U.S. museum exhibition, Eva Jospin (b. 1975, Paris) demonstrates her creative magnitude and the unique nuance of her singular practice. The range of Jospin's expression fascinates viewers with otherworldly appeal, from the sculpted forests and architectural follies she meticulously carves in cardboard to her richly embroidered landscape tapestries and her most intricate and delicate renderings. The artist's power is as equally evident in her intimately detailed works as it is in her monumental immersive installations that envelop audiences in their timeless presence and inspire a deep sense of wonder. Whether drawing from Renaissance forebearers or the fantastical worlds of fairy tales, Jospin's artworks collectively embrace the captivating mysteries of nature and ruins alike with intensive particularity and craftsmanship, encouraging us to contemplate contemporary materials and our place in history too. Together, we experience the whimsy and enchantment of these eternal conversations, with complete certainty of our central role in it all.

Group exhibition
In Character | Feb. 4–June 8, 2026
In Character explores how contemporary artists draw from the visual aesthetics of animation, illustration, and sequential art to unpack notions of identity, imagine alternate realities, and depict Black life and community. Across the featured paintings, drawings, sculptures, and textile works, the distinctive language of cartoons and comics emerges through flat, outlined forms, shallow picture planes, and exaggerated bodily features. Works like Trenton Doyle Hancock's grand superhero narratives and caricatured self-portraits mythologize personal experience and complicate understandings of power, while Gary Simmons' painted reinterpretations of early Looney Tunes characters interrogate the origins of racialized stereotypes in cartoons. By leveraging the familiarity of animation, the exhibiting artists demonstrate how popular media have historically flattened Black representation, while simultaneously revealing its potential for experimentation and expansion. In Character underscores the power of these aesthetic traditions as both a form of expression and a method for idealization and self-reinvention.

Mona Bozorgi
Strain and Strand | Feb. 6–May 17, 2026
Mona Bozorgi (b. 1979, Tehran, Iran; SCAD M.F.A., photography, 2018) uses experimental photographic processes to examine the intersections of representation, objecthood, and gender. Bridging photography, sculpture, and fiber arts, her latest body of work expands upon her ongoing series Threads of Freedom, which explores the role of imagery in Iranian women's self-representation and performance of gender amid broader sociopolitical movements in the country. Printing photographs on silk then unraveling and reassembling them, Bozorgi overlays "selfie" images originally shared on social media of women participating in protests against government mandates enforcing the hijab, or headscarf. The resulting collages, composed of the individual silk strands and mounted within wooden frames reminiscent of daguerreotype cases, mirror the deluge of online imagery presented on cellphones' boxed screens, meditate on female bodily autonomy and containment, and highlight the intimacy, vulnerability, and impact of public-facing images of oneself. Echoing silk's unmatched tensile strength, Strain and Strand celebrates the resilience of women who stand firm individually and find great power together.

Anish Kapoor
Earth Sky on Red Ground | Feb. 9–June 7, 2026
Featuring 15 canvases ranging from 2012 to 2022, Earth Sky on Red Ground is the first museum exhibition in the U.S. devoted entirely to the painting practice of Anish Kapoor (b. 1954, Mumbai, India), an eminent artist recognized for his peerless international renown. His iconic sculptures in a diverse spectrum of materials often confound the viewer's perception. Yet Kapoor's paintings simultaneously emphasize the viscerality of our physical existence and the metaphysical inner worlds we share. The artist has intrepidly accomplished this feat with his expressive technique, characterized by sensuous brushwork and an immersive scale that envelops the viewer in the works' powerful traction. Kapoor's canvases feature abstract forms with a forceful gestural boldness that is deftly achieved in thickly impastoed oil paint. The works' timeless titles convey an almost ritualistic dialogue with the long arc of the medium and our collective history. The immediacy of Kapoor's approach to painting animates this integral part of his practice, demonstrating its centrality to the truly incomparable creative outpouring of a contemporary master.

Laurie Anderson
All in Your Head | Feb. 13–June 7, 2026
SCAD deFINE ART 2026 honoree Laurie Anderson (b. 1947, Glen Ellyn, Ill.) presents All in Your Head, an exhibition that brings together three installations featuring the written word, striking projected images, and the visualization of alternate realities. An internationally lauded avant-garde artist, Anderson has created innovative, transdisciplinary work in a career that spans five decades. She continues to expand the lexicon of performance art and bridge the divides between experimental expression and popular culture. Both arresting and ephemeral, Anderson's work tackles sprawling contemporary themes like the state of cultural life in the U.S. or anchors itself in age-old narratives like Noah's Ark. Through her myriad approaches — from filmmaking and live performance to painting, sculpture, digital media, and more — she underscores storytelling, both personal and collective, as a central driving force in her artistic practice. In this exhibition, Anderson traverses time and space, whether by virtually visiting the moon in an immersive VR work or traveling into the recesses of her childhood in a multimedia narrative, questioning what is remembered, what is spoken, and what is possible.
 

Schedule of events

All events take place at the SCAD Museum of Art, 601 Turner Blvd., Savannah, unless otherwise noted, and are free and open to the public.

Tuesday, Feb. 24
11 A.M.
Artist talks: Eva Jospin and Farah Al Qasimi
Eva Jospin and Farah Al Qasimi speak on their new exhibitions at two artist talks. Hear more from Jospin about her creative magnitude and the unique nuance of her singular practice. Discover how Al Qasimi blends digital and analog techniques and channels her fascination with ghost stories into her multidisciplinary work, offering insight into narratives behind her photographic subjects and her approach to composing music.

5:30–7:30 P.M.
Opening celebration
Join the SCAD Museum of Art to celebrate culture-shaping visionaries at the opening party for SCAD deFINE ART 2026. Connect with this year's honoree, boundary-breaking artist and performer Laurie Anderson, and many of the featured artists as the museum debuts a new season of exhibitions by Laurie Anderson, Farah Al Qasimi, Mona Bozorgi, Eva Jospin, Anish Kapoor, and Max Lamb. Explore their impactful works in the galleries and join a live-action drawing challenge in the museum's Alex Townsend Memorial Courtyard, followed by a performance of the site-specific interactive light installation VOLUMES by interdisciplinary artist Ezra Masch.

7 P.M.
Performance: Ezra Masch
Experience VOLUMES, a site-specific interactive light installation by Texas-based artist Ezra Masch that responds in real time to the rhythms of drummers. Brought to life by regional drummers working across a range of musical specialties, the installation comprises a grid of more than 20 tubular LED lights that translate strikes on drumheads and cymbals into luminous bursts. As the performance unfolds, sound and light enter a continuous feedback loop where each musical gesture shapes the next illumination and light, in turn, guides the performers' subsequent notes. Transforming a typically sonic experience into a predominantly visual one, VOLUMES offers new modes of performance at the intersection of sound, light, and space, broadening how musical expression is created and perceived by both musicians and audiences alike.

Wednesday, Feb. 25
9 A.M.
Master class: Laurie Anderson, Rosanne Cash, and A. M. Homes
Arnold Hall Theater, 1810 Bull St., Savannah
Hear from three titans of creativity in this master class roundtable featuring lauded avant-garde artist and SCAD deFINE ART 2026 honoree Laurie Anderson, celebrated singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash, and bestselling author A. M. Homes. Gain insight into the challenges and rewards of a life in the arts during this wide-ranging conversation on the creative process and building a career through experimentation and risk taking.

11 A.M.
Artist talk: Max Lamb
Noted for his ceaseless inventiveness, Max Lamb has become one of the most well-regarded designers of his generation. At this artist talk, Lamb shares insights on his craft and boundless creative practice, discussing his new exhibition Elements, which showcases the designer's versatility and the depth of his work.

2 P.M.
Artist talk: Trenton Doyle Hancock
Trenton Doyle Hancock, whose work is featured in the group exhibition In Character, speaks on the personal histories and formal strategies behind his expansive narratives. Hancock will trace the origins of his ever-evolving Moundverse, populated by figures such as Torpedo Boy and the Vegans, as a framework through which lived experience and broader cultural realities converge, while also reflecting on his career trajectory and its connections to animation and sequential art.

5 P.M.
SCAD deFINE ART 2026 honoree lecture: Laurie Anderson
Trustees Theater, 216 E. Broughton St., Savannah
SCAD deFINE ART 2026 honoree Laurie Anderson takes the stage for a multimedia lecture that illuminates her celebrated career and expands on themes in her SCAD Museum of Art exhibition All in Your Head. Known for work that has pushed boundaries and defied categorization across more than five decades, Anderson has pioneered the experimental use of technology, music, spoken word, and moving image in performances and installations. Experience Anderson's cutting-edge work in this special SCAD deFINE ART keynote event.

6 P.M.
SCAD Art Sales reception
Gutstein Gallery, 201 E. Broughton St., Savannah
Immediately following the honoree lecture with Laurie Anderson, SCAD Art Sales welcomes you across the street to Gutstein Gallery to view works by SCAD artists, available for purchase. In addition to hosting exhibitions throughout the year, SCAD Art Sales offers personalized curatorial services, artwork acquisition, custom commissions, and white-glove installation, connecting a global clientele to SCAD's network of 45,000+ artists and designers.

Thursday, Feb. 26
11 A.M.
Film screening: Under the Skin: In Conversation With Anish Kapoor
On the occasion of Anish Kapoor's exhibition Earth Sky on Red Ground, the SCAD Museum of Art presents a screening of Under the Skin, a documentary film by acclaimed director Martina Margaux Cozzi that emotionally explores Kapoor's creative universe and his relationship to art. The film reflects how Kapoor's work is "a vertiginous quest into existence, confronting the conditions of matter, the dynamics of perception and the power of ritual." The screening will be introduced by SCAD Museum of Art chief curator Daniel S. Palmer and followed by a discussion led by Kerry Brown, associate chair of art history at SCAD.

2 P.M.
Film screening and artist talk: Andrew Roberts
SCADshow, 1470 Spring St. NW, Atlanta
Join SCAD deFINE ART guest Andrew Roberts for an artist talk and screening of his film Me persigue tu sombra (Haunted by your shadow), which was recently featured in his SCAD Museum of Art exhibition Haunted. In this three-part film, Roberts animates spectral manifestations of a popular fast-food mascot in a restaurant interior, casting these apparitions as embodiments of his personal experience, corporate aesthetics, and geopolitical systems. After the screening, hear from Roberts about the concepts that inform his artistic practice and his methodology, which includes elements of gameplay and world-building.

5 P.M.
Professional practices panel: Working in an artist studio
At this year's professional practices panel in Savannah, hear from SCAD graduates excelling in the dynamic, high-level studio environments of today's most influential artists. Offering invaluable insight into the practical and professional skills required to succeed in a studio environment, the alumni panelists will also speak to how working closely with established artists can deeply inform and inspire your own creative practice. Learn how mentorship, exposure to new materials and methods, and the rhythms of a professional studio can shape your artistic voice and career path.
 

SCAD Museum of Art

The SCAD Museum of Art features more than 10 dynamic gallery spaces presenting exhibitions and commissioned works by international emerging and established artists. The museum serves visitors and students alike, enriching both the high caliber of education at SCAD and the cultural life of the Savannah community and beyond. Exhibitions range from painting, sculpture, and photography to digital media, fashion, and jewelry, complementing the artistic disciplines offered at the university. The museum also hosts public programming year-round, including lectures, gallery talks, workshops, and film screenings.

SCAD MOA has presented exhibitions by artists including Miya Ando, Radcliffe Bailey, Nick Cave, Doreen Lynette Garner, Katharina Grosse, Subodh Gupta, Hassan Hajjaj, Chase Hall, Alfredo Jaar, Isaac Julien, Shirin Neshat, Rashaad Newsome, Raúl de Nieves, Lorraine O'Grady, Ebony G. Patterson, Rose B. Simpson, and Saya Woolfalk, as well as site-specific installations by Rachel Feinstein, Jorge Pardo, Odili Donald Odita, Daniel Arsham, Jose Dávila, and others.

An award-winning architectural icon, the museum attracts visitors from around the world to the heart of Savannah's vibrant downtown historic district and incorporates the oldest surviving pre-Civil War railroad depot into its striking contemporary design. Recognized with awards from the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation, the Congress for the New Urbanism, the International Interior Design Association, and the Historic Savannah Foundation, the museum received the American Institute of Architects Honor Award for Architecture, a pinnacle achievement.

Established in 2011, the museum's Walter and Linda Evans Center for African American Studies celebrates the imaginative breadth and expressive legacy of African American art and culture. In the decade since its founding, the Evans Center and SCAD MOA have presented internationally heralded exhibitions focused on the legacies of Elizabeth Catlett, Frederick Douglass, Aaron Douglas, and Jacob Lawrence, as well as contemporary exhibitions by artists including Hank Willis Thomas, Carrie Mae Weems, Fred Wilson, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Kenturah Davis, Chase Hall, Nina Chanel Abney, and Awol Erizku. Visit scadmoa.org.
 

SCAD: The University for Creative Careers

SCAD is a private, nonprofit, accredited university, offering 100 graduate and undergraduate degree programs across locations in Atlanta and Savannah, Georgia; Lacoste, France; and online via SCADnow. SCAD enrolls approximately 18,500 undergraduate and graduate students from more than 100 countries. The future-minded SCAD curriculum engages professional-level technology and myriad advanced learning resources, affording students opportunities for internships, professional certifications, and real-world assignments with corporate partners through SCADpro, the university's renowned research lab and prototype generator. SCAD has earned top rankings for degree programs in interior design, architecture, film, fashion, digital media, and more. Career success is woven into every fiber of the university, resulting in a superior alumni employment rate. A 2025 study found that 99% of recent SCAD graduates were employed, pursuing further education, or both within 12 months of graduation. SCAD provides students and alumni with ongoing career support through personal coaching, alumni programs, a professional presentation studio, and more. 

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