Cornell M.F.A. ’26 Group Show: I Happen to be Rock

Abstract

I Happen to be Rock is a group exhibition by the 2026 Cornell M.F.A. in Creative Visual Arts candidates. The exhibition will be on view from May 9–31 at Ortega y Gasset Projects in Brooklyn, New York. The exhibition will be open on weekends: May 9–10, 16–17, 23–24, and 30–31 from 1–6 p.m.

Across painting, sculpture, printmaking, installation, writing, and expanded material practices, the exhibition gathers seven artists whose work insists on persistence, relation, transformation, and becoming. The title suggests both contingency and endurance; something accidental and elemental, arrived at and borne through. It evokes a condition of having taken form under pressure, of becoming matter, presence, witness.

Featuring works by graduating artists in Cornell University’s M.F.A. in Creative Visual Arts, I Happen to be Rock brings together distinct practices that remain in dynamic conversation with one another. Material curiosity and conceptual range shape the exhibition, as the artists move through questions of identity, collectivity, visibility, repair, queer construction, memory, and the horizon of what might still be made possible.

This exhibition is funded in part by the Cornell Council for the Arts.

Exhibiting Artists

All M.F.A. ’26

• Marissa Cote
• Carla Rangel García
• Michael Morgan
• Sheila Novak
• Onome Olotu
• Faye Pamintuan
• Yun Hsiang Wang