[image_spread img_url="https://ahva.cms.ar ts.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/sites/37/2026/04/AHVA-MFA-Exhibition-2026-webs ite-banner-image.jpg" caption="Image: Violet Johnson" width="website"]

The Belkin is pleased to pre sent Elsewhere\, Otherwise\, an exhibition of work by the 2026 gra duates of the University of British Columbia’s two-year Master of Fine Arts program: Yihk Qu Chan\, Violet Johnson\, Amanda Kachadoorian Jordi\, Nevad a Lynn\, Scott Massey and Golriz Rezvani. This program in the Department of Art History\, Visual Art and Theory is limited each year to a small group of five to six artists. Their contributions to this exhibition are the resu lt of intensive feedback and development within an intimate and discursive working environment. During the past two years\, these artists have worked closely with their advisory committees\, engaged with their fellow MFAs in weekly group critiques and reading groups\, artist talks and open studios\, and built relationships with their peers and the faculty of the department ’s art history and critical and curatorial streams to develop their own aes thetic\, theoretical and historically grounded artistic practices.

Elsewhere\, Otherwise: UBC Master of Fine Arts Graduate Exhibition i s curated by Melanie O’Brian and presented with support from the Department of Art History\, Visual Art and Theory at the University of British Columb ia and Martyn Golding.

Yihk Qu Chan

Yihk Qu Chan (Canadian\, b. 1997) unpacks the cultural and sociopolitical systemic traumas she has inherited as a second-generation Hong Kong-Canadia n settled within the tensions of colonial legacies. Her research looks at i ntergenerational immigrant relations and the invisibility of Asian labour u nder Western hegemony\, while her studio practice centres the intimacy of t he personal and explores how the materialization of time through ritualized art-making may soften the delineations between one’s memory\, the present and their imagination of the future. Yihk Qu\, an Anglicized namesake\, is a textual synthesis of her identities as Natalie Chan and 易翹—a pairing of c haracters which come together to mean “to exchange the meaning of excellenc e\,” and reflect an ethos defined by a desire to seek what transformative p otentials can be found through translating across cultural borderlines. She holds a BFA from Simon Fraser University\, co-founded the local Vancouver arts collective Withintensions and continues to enjoy educating\, illustrat ing and tattooing alongside her conceptual work.

Violet Johnson

Violet Johnson (American\, b. 1999) is a mixed Native and Euro-American artist\, a member of the Hoopa Valley Tribe and a Yurok descendant. Johnson’s analogue photo-sculptural practice directly en gages with bodies of waters along the Pacific Northwest Coast from Washingt on to California as a means of tracing significant sites and memories of he r personal and familial histories. By directly engaging with gathered water from significant sites – rivers\, lakes\, ocean\, creeks and taps\, water takes on a form of mark-making and storytelling. Johnson holds a BA from the University of Oregon.

Amanda Kachadoorian Jordi

Amanda Kachadoori an Jordi (b. California\, 1995) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Van couver\, whose practice examines global migration\, bureaucratic systems an d cross-border identities through sculptural installation\, photography\, p rintmaking\, painting and video performance. Jordi investigates how bureauc racy shapes everyday existence\, drawing on familial and personal experienc es of migration through systems of governmental control and cultural exchan ge\, while continuously navigating those systems and examining how the body and psyche is formed through surveillance\, movement and in-betweenness. J ordi holds a BA in art practice from the University of California\, Berkele y and was artist-in-residence at Bread&Salt in Barrio Logan\, San Diego (20 19). Her work has been exhibited internationally\, including solo exhibitio ns at the Ahoi Galerie in Altstadt Luzern\, Switzerland (2024) and Oceansid e Museum of Art\, California (2021). Her work was featured in New Ameri can Paintings\, Pacific Coast Issue #163 (2023).

Nevada Lynn

Nevada Lynn (Canadian\, b. 1973) is an inter disciplinary Red River Métis artist of mixed European ancestry whose work e xplores Indigenous resurgence\, relational care\, and visual storytelling t hrough research-creation and material practice. She holds a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design\, where she has taught\, and her work has b een exhibited nationally and internationally. She is the recipient of the L ieutenant Governor’s Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts (2024) a nd the Fred Herzog Award for Visual Art and Community Engagement (2025). Ly nn lives and works on the shared\, unceded territory of the Skwxwú7mesh and Lílwat Nations in Whistler\, British Columbia.

Scott Massey

Scott Massey (Canadian\, b. 1971) is an interdisc iplinary artist whose work connects specific inherent material qualities to concepts of deep geologic and astronomical time/spacetime. Using an experi mental methodology while often incorporating subverted apparatus in the dev elopment of his work\, Massey posits an “astro-material poetics” as the fou ndation of his practice. He accentuates and amplifies phenomena\, heightene d through artificial means or slight manipulations\, proposed in speculativ e formations of precarity. Through a combination of considered material sel ection\, industrial fabrication processes\, artisanal craftsmanship and res trained gesture\, Massey’s works endeavour to engage deep-time references a longside our comparatively transitory lifetimes. Massey holds a BFA in phot ography from Emily Carr University\, and has exhibited in solo and group ex hibitions across Canada.

Golriz Rezvani
Golriz Rezvani (Iranian Canadian\, b. 1980) is a multidisciplinary art ist whose practice spans painting and drawing\, with a recent focus on inst allation and bread as a central material. Her work examines bread as both a medium and a domestic social artifact. Working with installation and ready made forms\, she transforms this culturally loaded material through acts of marking\, erosion and alteration. Her practice engages questions of gender ed labour\, care under conditions of inequality and the politics embedded i n acts of nourishment and deterioration. Rezvani holds an MFA from Azad Uni versity\, Tehran and a BFA from Soureh University\, Tehran. Rezvani has par ticipated in numerous juried and solo exhibitions and has worked as an inst ructor at Emily Carr University and Vancouver Film School. She is a recipie nt of a 2024 SSHRC Graduate Scholarship.