Touch Me Not: 12th Annual Undergraduate Juried Exhibition

Presented by the Department of Art & Art History, the 12th Annual Undergraduate Juried Exhibition, Touch Me Not, showcases a campus-wide selection of artwork by twenty-two Stanford undergraduate students.

Touch Me Not: 12th Annual Undergraduate Juried Exhibition
On View: October 7 – December 4, 2026
Stanford Art Gallery, 419 Lasuen Mall
Gallery Hours: Monday–Friday, 1–5pm
Opening Reception: Thursday, Oct. 8, 4–6pm
Curated by Gabriel Harrison

Artists: Alison Cao, Amelia Chiu, Bryan Defjan, Patrick Flanagan, Paul Gontard, Alexander Gu, Kaili Hastiin-Nez, Kea Kahoilua-Clebsch, Taz Laursen, Alexi Lindeman, Gregory Medina-Kenyon, Clara Mooney, Bridget Phillips, Zoë Rehnborg, Aileen Rubio, Kyra Standing Crow, Wadei Tadros, Linh Vo, Jude Wolf, Melody Wu, Seiji Yang, and Stephanie Zhang

This exhibition brings together the work of undergraduate artists selected through a process grounded not in a shared subject or predetermined theme, but in the quality, vitality, and distinctiveness of their individual practices. The works arrive from different perspectives and through different forms of making, each reflecting the questions, observations, and ways of seeing of its maker. When considered together, unexpected affinities begin to emerge.

Across the exhibition, many of the artists engage with nature and natural processes, sometimes directly through figurative imagery and at other times through more oblique references to growth, transformation, interdependence, cycles, materiality, and change. Nature becomes both subject and metaphor: a way of looking outward at the world while also looking inward.

These connections are not necessarily the result of a common intention. They become visible through proximity, suggesting a broadening engagement with the world beyond the self. This can be felt immediately upon entering the exhibition, where Taz Laursen’s installation of disembodied hands grasping disembodied feet beneath a wire-frame echo of a living tree creates what the artist describes as an “ironic chimera distorting the boundary between nature and the body.” A similar impulse animates Alexi Lindeman’s lithographic prints, which seek to “entangle relationships between and within humanity and the non-human,” inviting reflection on how one interacts with oneself, with others, and with the world.

Elsewhere, the relationship between the natural and the human-made becomes material. Zoe Rehnborg’s ghostly hanging lanterns, formed from dried SCOBY, a Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast, transform a living microbial culture into an evocative sculptural presence. Nearby, Heber Alvarez, Amelia Chiu, and Blake Charles Pigott re-visit Buckminster Fuller’s ubiquitous geodesic dome, unfolding, stretching and animating its once rigid geometry into a snake-like form. Using imperfect, locally sourced materials, their installation addresses “the material ecology of Northern California and the desire to minimize the carbon expended in the production of the installation.” Across these works, organic forms, biological processes, and material choices become ways of considering where the human body and human emotion sit within larger ecological systems.

Taken as a whole, the works reveal a shared attentiveness to change, connection, embodiment, and material life. The boundaries between the individual and the surrounding world become less fixed, as encounters with nature offer artists a means of thinking through experience at once ecological, emotional, physical, and temporal.

What begins as a collection of independently selected practices becomes a space of unexpected conversation. The exhibition reflects the individuality of these emerging artists while also revealing the affinities that can surface when distinct, deeply creative ways of seeing are brought into proximity.

Touch Me Not is a juried exhibition of undergraduate work drawn from across the campus. The jury consisted of Jonathan Calm, Associate Professor of Photography; Maggie Dethloff, Assistant Curator of Photography and New Media at the Cantor Arts Center; and Gabriel Harrison, Associate Director and Curator for Galleries and Exhibitions.

Poster Image: Artwork by Bryan Defjan, Touch Me Not, 2025. Oil, acrylic, and glitter on canvas, 44 x 34 in.

VISITOR INFORMATION: Stanford Art Gallery is located at 419 Lasuen Mall, off Palm Drive. The gallery is open Monday–Friday, 1–5pm, and will be closed the week of November 23–27. Visitor parking is available in designated areas and payment is managed through ParkMobile (free after 4pm, except by the Oval). Alternatively, take the Caltrain to Palo Alto Transit Center and hop on the free Stanford Marguerite Shuttle. This exhibition is open to Stanford affiliates and the general public. Admission is free.

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