Seven SAIC Community Members Named to Newcity’s 2026 Breakout Artists List

Newcity's Breakout Artists 2026 once again places the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) at the center of the city's emerging art scene, with seven SAIC community members named. All seven are also included in Newcity Breakout Artists 2026, a companion exhibition at Chicago Artists Coalition, on view through April 23. From sound installations and kite-garments to textile memorials and ephemeral sculpture, the SAIC community members included in this year's list reflect the breadth and rigor of the School's approach to contemporary practice.

Hai-Wen Lin (MDes 2023) received a Master of Design in Fashion, Body and Garment from SAIC, a training that surfaces directly in their sculptural "kite-garments," works whose fabrics function as both kites and wearable clothing. Lin's practice spans origami, kite construction, and installation, drawing on Chinese cultural history, personal experience, and queer identity. Their 2025 solo show at the Museum of Arts and Design, where they were named the 2025 Burke Prize recipient, and a concurrent duo exhibition at Roots & Culture mark a notable year for the artist.

Mauricio López F. (MFA 2025) came to SAIC on scholarship to pursue a Master of Fine Arts in Sound after relocating from Santiago, Chile to Chicago. His studies shaped his practice immediately: his sculptural work 60625, named for his Chicago ZIP code, uses recordings of his apartment's ambient sounds to animate a structure built from card-catalog filing drawers. His 2025 solo exhibition Wind Reenactment at Comfort Station expanded that inquiry into three kinetic works examining participation, futility, and built environments.

Isabelle Frances McGuire (BFA 2016) studied Film, Video, New Media and Animation at SAIC. Her practice spans 3D printing, robotics, found objects, and sculpture, building speculative histories out of American mythology, from the Salem witch trials to the Abraham Lincoln birthplace site. Her work has shown at the Renaissance Society and in the current Whitney Biennial, among international venues. 

Mariana Noreña G. (MFA 2023) received a Master of Fine Arts in Fiber and Material Studies from SAIC. Working with soil, glass, plant matter, and fire, Noreña tracks transformation across time in her rigorously researched, site-responsive practice. Her recent work Soil and Rain, developed during a residency in Arena, Wisconsin, visualizes agricultural cycles of crop rotation through stratified soil columns. She recently returned to Chicago after a fellowship at The Studios at MASS MoCA.

Monika Plioplyte (MFA 2019) studied in SAIC's Print Media department, where she expanded into ceramics and performance alongside her established printmaking practice. Born in Lithuania, Plioplyte brings together Baltic folklore, traditional textile patterns, photography, and hand-cut paper into works exploring personal and collective memory. A 2025 solo show at Columbia College Chicago and a new body of work supported by a DCASE Individual Artists Program Grant reflect an active and expanding practice.

Lecturer Carina Yepez teaches at SAIC and works at Firebird Community Arts. Her textile practice centers on family photographs printed onto fabric, then reworked through quilting and appliqué to create devotional portraits of Mexican American elders and ancestors. In Chevita, Mi Corazón, Yepez transforms a photograph of her late grandmother into a dimensional quilted work crowned with layered florals, placing her, as Yepez says, among "the people that should be honored."

Sangwoo Yoo’s (MFA 2024) practice centers on ephemerality and material transformation. His ongoing series Loss began with a discarded Christmas tree retrieved from Millennium Park and has since taken the form of powder, incense, fragrance, paper, tea ceremony, and performance. Work from the series has been shown at Hyde Park Art Center, Bemis Center, and Chicago Artists Coalition, and a second solo institutional show is forthcoming at the Kim Chong Yung Museum in Seoul this summer.