current Students
SamANTHA Hiura
Samantha Hiura (she/her) is a third year graduate student in CCA’s dual degree program for Visual and Critical Studies (MA) and Curatorial Practice (MA). Her academic and curatorial interests lie in contemporary art’s power to undo and unsettle, with particular interest in the intersections of queer and BIPOC representation and criticism. She also holds a BA in Humanities and Art History with departmental honors from Seattle University. She has worked at Micki Meng Gallery (San Francisco, CA) currently acts as the Curatorial Fellow at the Institute for Contemporary Art San Francisco, and has published art criticism through Variable West and Rewind, Review, Respond."
YUNFEI HUA
Yunfei Hua is a writer and researcher currently based in San Francisco, who writes and researches visual culture with an interest in subcultural communities and their cultural productions. She has written about self-motivated resistance in post-epidemic China and is now working on her thesis about fandom culture and communities around a highly political-related video game. Before stepping into the writing realm, she was a sculptor and socially engaged artist. Hua is now completing her MA in Visual & Critical Studies at California College of the Arts.
HANNAH FHAYE OLIVER
Hannah Fhaye Oliver (she/they) is a SF based artist, writer, cook, facilitator, activist, ecosexual and current student in CCA’s dual degree program for Performance Art & Social Practice (MFA) and Visual & Critical Studies (MA). They find importance in maintaining a child-like wonder as it helps open the heart as well as being able to discern with a cool head in order to strengthen our intuition. Her practice always comes back to relationships, with ourselves and others from people to animals and nature. These days they are thinking about how we can bridge gaps of disconnection and work together to build a more loving action world.
ALFREDO ZAPATA DE JESUS
Alfredo Zapata De Jesús is a multidisciplinary artist from Puerto Rico. The projects developed through his practice engage with past, present and future environments of his life. Recent work such as Mujer en tierra ficticia: Remanentes and Encubrimientos are examples of his intentions to isolate, document and react through a broad range of mediums. Earlier this year, Alfredo obtained a BA in Plastic Arts and a second BA in Art Theory from the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez. He is currently pursuing a MFA in Fine Arts and a MA in Visual & Critical Studies.
VANESSA PEREZ WINDER
Vanessa Perez Winder is a Peruvian American writer, editor, and arts worker committed to liberatory and decolonial forms of art historical research and curatorial praxis. They are drawn to the ways in which artists transform everyday objects, spaces, and rituals into sites of re-articulation and reclamation, and work within cyclical or fragmented temporalities that speak to the dislocations of diasporic life. Vanessa is a 2025 MA candidate in the Visual and Critical Studies program at California College of the Arts; the 2024-2025 Lead Editor of Rewind Review Respond at CCA; and the 2024-2025 Curatorial Fellow at Root Division, San Francisco.
BADRI VALIAN
Badri Valian is a painter, social practitioner, and participatory interactive installation artist based in San Francisco. Born and raised in the mountainous central region of Iran, her life was deeply affected by the Islamist government that came to power after the 1979 revolution. Her maternal Kurdish heritage traces back to Kurdistan, near the Iraqi borders, where her family was displaced to central Iran. This displacement and the resulting intergenerational trauma significantly influenced her mother’s lifelong struggles with severe depression.
Badri’s artistic practice is focused on exploring the personal and societal impacts of radical Islam, particularly through decoding the physical and emotional relationship between herself and her mother by examining her childhood photo archive. Last year, her work was showcased in prominent venues such as ICA SF, YBCA, NUMU, and Kyoto museums. She is also the featured artist in the book Women, Art, Freedom: Artists and Street Politics in Iran by Dr. Pamela Karimi.
Narkita Wiley
Narkita Wiley is a visual artist whose practice spans the mediums of photography, (text)iles, installation, and performance. She earned her BS in Public Relations in 2010 and a MA in Arts Politics from the Department of Art & Public Policy, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU in 2022.