Past Exhibitions 2025

Art plays a crucial role in areas of conflict, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, by serving as a powerful medium for expression, healing and reconciliation. During and after conflicts, art can help communities process trauma, preserve cultural heritage, foster dialogue and understanding, and ultimately help revitalize a nation.

Through painting, sculpture, music and other forms of artistic expression, people can find a safe and constructive outlet for expressing intense feelings of trauma and loss. This process of creation can be painful, but therapeutic, helping individuals to process their trauma and begin the journey toward healing.

Significant cultural items and places are often targeted by the opposing side during warfare. As seen in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where numerous historical buildings, religious sites and artifacts were damaged or completely destroyed. Their destruction threatens the cultural traditions and history of generations of people.

Art can play a vital role in preserving and restoring the history and collective memory of a community. Artists can actively work to document and interpret cultural traditions, ensuring that they are not lost even in the face of conflict. They also use art to create dialog, find empathy and hope, and rebuild after conflict.

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, where ethnic tensions remain high, art initiatives have brought together people from different backgrounds to collaborate on creative projects and share perspectives. One example is the Ars Aevi Museum of Contemporary Art in Sarajevo, which established a collection of more than 130 works from international artists, curators and museums around the world. Built in the historic Vijećnica (City Hall building in Sarajevo) UNESCO (United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization) describes the Ars Aevi as “a physical and symbolic space in which inspiration may be found … [it] is the epitome of the resilience of culture and a strong symbol of international solidarity”.

From the Ashes features work from eight individual artists on loan from the Ars Aevi Museum of Contemporary Art. These artists have created powerful works that draw attention to the atrocities committed during the war as well as the local and international peacebuilding efforts that followed. The intent of bringing these works to Texas A&M University is to convey the immense importance of art as a means of expression and healing; preserving cultural heritage; raising awareness and advocacy; and ultimately revitalizing a nation. By harnessing the power of art, communities can navigate the challenges of conflict and work towards a more peaceful and cohesive future.

ArtFest is the Memorial Student Center Visual Arts Committee’s annual art competition and exhibition. All Texas A&M students, regardless of major, are invited to submit their artwork in this one of a kind Texas A&M tradition. The students who submit artwork to ArtFest come from any major, any experience level and any age.

The top three pieces received a cash prize: first place $100, second place $75, third place $50, and film overall $100. Winners were announced at a public reception on April 16 from 7 – 9 p.m. This year we received a total of 43 submissions from 27 different artists! Thank you to everyone who submitted to this annual celebration of creativity at Texas A&M!

How are the winners selected?

A combination of student, faculty and staff judges select the winners.

As a professional photographer working in a variety of industries from advertising to portraiture, Steve Simpson was trained in the art of seeing and artfully displaying commercially appealing subjects. Behind the public face of his photography work, Simpson has always been a painter. In his paintings, Simpson’s love affair with color, shape, line and texture converge into something otherworldly.

Simpson’s forms emulate natural and man-made structural forms. You can easily see shapes that echo microbial life alongside lines and circuits patterned from electronics. Layers of color seem to compete on the canvas, creating a sense of glowing bioluminescent life that is vaguely biological and technological—conveniently described as biomorphic.

The works on display in this exhibit were all created between 2021 and 2024, and this selection is only a sample of Simpson’s prolific catalog of work created during these 4 years. As you explore this exhibit, you can almost sense how Simpson’s playfulness with the medium seems to vibrate off the canvas. But what does it all mean?

Simpson’s philosophy of art is reminiscent of a quote from Henri Matisse, a well-known French expressionist painter of the 20th century. In 1908, Matisse wrote: “What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity, devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter, an art which could be for every mental worker, for the businessman as well as the man of letters.” Simpson himself explains, “there is no overreaching political or social issue that my work addresses.” The MSC Visual Arts Committee chose to exhibit Simpson’s paintings for two simple reasons, to share the life effusing joy of making art, and to inject our messy human world with a little bit of whimsy and imagination.

Artist Karen Hillier was instrumental in the development of the Visualization degree program at Texas A&M University and has a 38-year teaching career. Her artwork is characterized by experimentation with different analog and digital mediums, materials and processes. Her work is also informed by photographers like Russell Lee and Dorothea Lange, who documented the American Great Depression in the 1930s and ‘40s.

The work of BRAZOSbrazos spans Hillier’s decade-long process of exploring land around the Brazos River bottom and capturing its everchanging beauty and complexity through stereo pinhole photography. Hillier’s familiarity with the agricultural communities and the landscape of the Brazos Valley developed throughout her childhood experiences. Growing up in Bryan, TX, she developed an appreciation for the care and stewardship she witnessed among farming families. BRAZOSbrazos is an attentive presentation of the landscape and how it is shaped by the farmers who cultivate it, as well as greater forces of time and nature.