Student Experience
About Hunger & Resilience: Cowell’s art exhibitions focus on hunger, resilience, and campus food systems
This spring at Cowell College’s Eloise Pickard Smith Gallery, About Hunger & Resilience by photographer Michael Nye is presented in dialogue with Circuit, a student-led installation on campus food systems.
Artist Morgan Yacullo and co-curator Sloane Harris welcome visitors to Circuit, a student-led exhibition exploring UCSC’s food systems and networks of care.
The Eloise Pickard Smith Gallery at Cowell College is currently presenting About Hunger & Resilience, a powerful exhibition by photographer and storyteller Michael Nye. Presented in dialogue with Circuit, a complementary student-led installation in the gallery’s annex, the exhibition confronts the realities of hunger in America through deeply personal portraits and oral histories collected over four and a half years.
The gallery, directed by Alan Christy, the provost of Cowell College and professor of history, and Susana Ruiz, the associate provost of Cowell College and associate professor of film and digital media, is part of a longstanding campus tradition that uses art to explore pressing social issues and connect across disciplines.
As part of a yearlong focus on food systems and food justice, the exhibition highlights UC Santa Cruz’s growing network of partnerships addressing basic needs. The gallery has collaborated closely with the Basic Needs team to bridge artistic storytelling with student support efforts. Together, About Hunger & Resilience and Circuit, bring up the nationwide issue of food insecurity to campus, reflecting the lived experiences of many in the UC Santa Cruz community and reinforcing the team’s mission to reduce food insecurity and support holistic student well-being.
Curatorial intern and co-curator Sloane Harris, who helped shape both exhibitions, said, “Michael’s portraits and accompanying oral histories bring critical attention to the issue of food insecurity in America. These stories are meant to bring our community together to consider how food insecurity affects us all, especially here on campus.”
Nye’s work gives voice to individuals who have experienced hunger, illuminating the intersections of food insecurity with poverty, mental health, war, addiction, and systemic inequality.
In the adjoining Anne Dizikes Annex, undergraduate Morgan Yacullo expands the conversation with Circuit, a photographic installation grounded in UCSC’s local food systems. A biology and environmental studies major graduating this spring, Yacullo draws from her academic and creative background to explore ecological interconnectedness and mutual aid through art.
“These alternative food systems are more than just sources of nourishment, they’re acts of solidarity, rooted in student-led planning, organization, and hands-on labor,” Yacullo said. “Circuit follows the entangled systems that nourish UCSC students—gardens, farms, non-transactional markets, and cafés—alongside the living processes that sustain them.”
The installation traces food’s movement across key sites on campus, including the UCSC Farm and Chadwick Garden, the Redwood Free Market, and the Cowell Coffee Shop. These spaces, as Yacullo documents, “function as a living network where nourishment, labor, and connection circulate through everyday acts of sustenance.”
Curated with a natural rhythm that moves between macro and micro scales, Circuit echoes Nye’s emotional narratives by focusing on the UCSC community’s tangible responses to food insecurity.
“Together,” Harris said, “About Hunger & Resilience and Circuit invite us to think expansively about hunger—not only as a condition of lack, but as a site of potential, action, and transformation.”
About Hunger & Resilience and Circuit are on view at Cowell College’s Eloise Pickard Smith Gallery this spring until June 6. Admission is free and open to the public.