Slow Fiction, Flashing Nostalgia brings together new work by the 2026 MFA graduating class of CalArts in the departments of Art, Photography and Media, and Art and Technology. The exhibition takes its title from two ways of experiencing life in a state of transition: “slow fiction” describes the deliberate speculation of the future against the accelerated pace of contemporary life, while the “flashing nostalgia” refers to the memories retrieved in quick succession, with little time to linger.

Across the exhibition, artists explore themes of reality, fiction, religion, and the exploration of the self through painting, sculpture, installation, video, sound, and photography. Layers of paint are peeled back from the floors of CalArts studios; archival photographs are rediscovered; and the utopian dreams of the 1960s are memorized. As some artists invoke the past into the present, others toward alternative future realities through Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Carl Jung’s theory of the unconscious, as well as the emergence of autonomous feminist communities and the pursuit of joy imagined through queer futurism.

Though each artist takes a different approach, they respond to the urgencies of the present moment. Their work meditates on systems of power marked by the incarceration of immigrants in detention centers, the expanding reach of institutional surveillance, and the circulation of war footage through digital platforms. These observations point toward the disorienting backdrop that seems to accompany everyday life. Subtle flashes of disorder permeate the galleries, countered by opportunities for respite amid a landscape of global crises. Here, a photograph from a century ago becomes relevant in the present, while a book written today manifests its resonance decades later. More words, memories, histories, and dreams are needed when everything is happening at once.