Scripps College will host its annual senior art exhibition, Whiplash, from May 2–17, 2025, at the Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery. The show features works from 12 artists across various media who explore the interplay between control and chaos and reflect on how they navigate intense moments, inviting audiences to embrace the discomfort of change. A free opening reception with music and light refreshments will be held May 2, 2025, from 6–9 p.m. at the gallery.
Each spring, Scripps’ senior art exhibition enables a cohort of the college’s art majors to display their own selections in a museum setting for public engagement and discourse. Participating artists include senior art majors Leslie Ahuatzi, Giulia Bellon, Emma Brauser, Cayman Chen, Olive Gaetz, Ali Ge, Jamie Haith, Fiona Irving-Beck, Lue “LIKETHEHIGHWAY” Khoury, Ruby Salvatore Palmer, Mikayla Stout, and Jessica Yim. Full artist bios are available here.
“The interdisciplinary nature of Whiplash evinces the numerous—yet always jarring—ways in which we experience personal, social, and environmental shifts,” say Scripps seniors Jessica Yim and Emma Brauser, who are members of the exhibition’s promotional committee. “Each work offers a visceral, sometimes disorienting experience that mirrors the unpredictable rhythms of life.”
Whiplash has been made possible through the generous support of the Jean and Arthur Ames Art Fund; the Lori Bettison-Varga Endowment Fund for Student Thesis and Research Support; the Mary N. Freedman Fund for the Senior Art Exhibition; and the Scripps Fine Arts Foundation.
The Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery will be open during the exhibition from 12–4 p.m., Wednesday through Sunday. Admission to the Gallery is free. Additional information about the exhibition is available on the gallery’s website at rcwg.scrippscollege.edu or by calling (909) 607-3397.
Featured Artists’ Bios
Leslie Ahuatzi ’25
Leslie Ahuatzi’s work places a strong emphasis on the complexities of cultural identity, self-perception, and resistance amidst an unstable political climate. Her current work is rooted in traditional Mexican artforms where she is able to challenge misinformed narratives on immigrant communities. Through a combination of printmaking and graphic design, she confronts the dehumanizing rhetoric that plagues immigrants. Leslie’s work aims to reclaim space, disrupt stereotypes, and invites viewers to reconsider who society labels as “others.”
Giulia Bellon ’25
Giulia Bellon’s current work focuses on design’s impact on our spatial habits. Her Ornaments for Living are speculative ornate machines that “waste” our time.
Emma Brauser ’25
Emma Brauser primarily works in painting. Brauser’s work utilizes both abstraction and representation to explore what is lost in translation, whether that be from childhood to adulthood or from the visual to the tactile.
Cayman Chen ’25
Cayman Chen’s practice centers around fashion and textiles and is grounded in a commitment to environmental sustainability. Her Scripps College thesis project uses textiles to examine the concept of “home” through a diasporic and transcultural lens and explore how personal and collective experiences of migration shape our identities.
Olive Gaetz ’25
Olive Gaetz is a dual Spanish and art major. Inspired by her semester abroad in Barcelona, she researched the history and semiotics of bull iconography in Spain and translated it into a series of digitally designed “travel” posters. Current political and cultural tensions in Spain concerning bullfighting inspired her to delve deeper into the history of bull imagery and how it has influenced Spain’s national identity and touristic image. Gaetz intends for her body of work to be informative and critical, questioning the problematic values the “toro” upholds and speculating how the bull’s significance could evolve in the future.
Ali Ge ’25
Ali Ge is a dual major in media studies and studio art who works with the unique narrative potentials of digital art and video games. Their current practice delves into ecological horror as a site of ideological confrontation, exploring the relationships between desire and alienation, fantasy and escapism.
Jamie Haith ’25
Jamie Haith is a studio arts major with a concentration in sculpture and a minor in biology. Fascinated by the idea of making the microscopic macroscopic, Jamie finds artistic inspiration from the intricacies of life. Her practices often mirror the structures and creatures encountered in the pages of scientific explorations. Her work aims to explore the intersection between craft and fine art by focusing on functionality in the design of wheel-thrown and altered sculptural pieces. In her Scripps College thesis, she designs pieces based on Radiolaria and Diatoms, ecologically vital micro marine organisms. In a world currently faced with a climate crisis, illuminating the absurd and fantastical intricacies of unseen organisms becomes especially prevalent and important.
Fiona Irving-Beck’25
Fiona Irving-Beck is a dual major in math and art interested in exploring the intersection between digital and physical worlds, emphasizing tactility and interaction. Their current work centers on the restorative aspects of interpersonal connection, as highlighted against a backdrop of physical and mental fragility and decline.
Lue “LIKETHEHIGHWAY” Khoury ’25
Lue “LIKETHEHIGHWAY” Khoury is a performance and conceptual artist exploring the concept of “commbodity” — a word they invented to describe a person’s worth, meaning, value, and purpose as socially constructed. LIKETHEHIGWHAY views life as an experiment in art, alchemizing the parts of themselves devalued into something beautiful. Through unfiltered, deeply autobiographical works, LIKETHEHIGHWAY is embarking on a process of reclaiming their commbodity by becoming the architect of their own narrative. Their work empowers others to create personal value systems to provide freedom from commbodity’s constructed sense of self and to find beauty in acts of daily living.
Ruby Salvatore Palmer ’25
Ruby Salvatore Palmer is a multidisciplinary artist working primarily in video. This year, she approached video as an experimental terrain to explore themes of identity, betweenness, embodiment, ritual, and media aesthetics. Currently, she has been spending time with her singer songwriter/telemarketer uncle, Derek (a.k.a. DK), documenting the process of family leaning on one another against the backdrop of Los Angeles.
Mikayla Stout ’25
Mikayla Stout is a dual major in interdisciplinary studies in culture and studio art. She understands the most poignant moments of her life through art, capturing intimacy, fear, darkness, and love in her belly (2025) series. Especially interested in bodies, gender, sexuality, and experiences of pain, she explores these themes with an air of abstraction. Her Scripps College thesis work investigates the female body’s experience of control and liberation in a world that is often hostile toward its natural state. Utilizing commercially available items such as pantyhose, insulation foam, stuffed animals, bandages, and silicone, she creates amalgamations of material signifiers that both comfort and disturb viewers. The concept of “the fold,” as theorized by philosopher Gilles Deleuze, is a central framework for her art, defining the tension inherent in the contradictions of the body. Through creating folds, seams, secret chambers, and binding flesh together, Stout’s pieces create a space for viewers to confront their bodies and the societal forces that shape them.
Jessica Yim ’25
Jessica Yim’s work focuses on the US healthcare system and the inhumanity that is sometimes practiced by healthcare professionals. Her piece, The Ag(new) Clinic, remakes Thomas Eakins’ The Agnew Clinic (1889) to recreate the pressure, power, and inhumanity inherent in the US healthcare system as well as the persisting vulnerability one feels as a patient, whether it be in the 1800s or today