The Carnegie Mellon University School of Art MFA Program and The Andy Warhol Museum present “Time-Honored Non-Specifics,” the 2026 MFA Thesis Exhibition, on view March 27-April 12, 2026.

“Time-Honored Non-Specifics” features new work by Naomi Chambers, Bulumko Mbete, and Afrooz Partovi, whose studio-based practices span painting, assemblage sculpture, textiles, ceramics, installation, immersive technologies, and time-based media. The thesis exhibition is a critical presentation for the MFA candidates, offering them an opportunity to connect their creative practices to a broader cultural discourse in Pittsburgh. Now in its second year at The Warhol, the exhibition also continues a growing partnership between the museum and CMU, bringing these artists into the legacy of one of the School of Art’s most influential alumni. 

The exhibition title speaks to the three artists’ shared, though distinctly interpreted, relationships to time, traditions, and meaning. Chambers, a Pittsburgh-born painter and assemblage sculptor, roots her work in community histories and Black feminist modes of care, and her practice reflects years of collaboration, mentorship, and collective organizing. Mbete, a multidisciplinary artist from South Africa, draws from textile traditions and craft methodologies practiced by women in Southern Africa, engaging them as living archives of generational knowledge and contemporary realities. Partovi, an artist-architect from Iran, explores absence, disappearance, and the porous boundaries between physical and digital space, using immersive technologies to surface overlooked histories and intangible forms of memory. Together, their thesis work culminates in an exhibition grounded in three years of intensive critical inquiry within the MFA program.

The Carnegie Mellon University School of Art MFA Program is an interdisciplinary, experimental, research-based program that provides students with a challenging and supportive context to expand and develop their work and thinking as artists. As one of the top-ranked graduate programs in the country, CMU views artmaking as a vital social, critical, and intellectual pursuit. Graduate students are encouraged to use comparative and intersectional approaches to critical and cultural theory, allowing this inquiry to inform and expand what it means to make art within the contemporary condition.

Andy Warhol (then Andrew Warhola) earned his degree in pictorial design in 1949 from CMU (then the Carnegie Institute of Technology). Although he struggled in his first-year arts classes and was required to take a summer drawing course to strengthen his skills, the drawings he produced — especially those of his brother Paul’s produce truck — earned him the Martin B. Leisser Prize and his first exhibition in the college’s fine arts gallery. He went on to become a star student, joining several campus arts organizations, including the modern dance club, and serving as editor of the student publication Cano. This enduring connection makes The Warhol a fitting site for the thesis exhibition, reinforcing the legacy of creative risk-taking and experimentation shared across generations of CMU artists.

Opening Reception

Friday, March 27, 2026, 5–8pm

Please join us for a public Opening Reception celebrating the Carnegie Mellon School of Art MFA Class of 2026 thesis exhibition at The Andy Warhol Museum. Free admission for members and CMU students. Half-price museum admission for all others starting at 5pm.

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Press Preview

Thursday, March 26, 2026, 2pm

A press preview will be held in advance of the public opening. Reservations are required. Email press@warhol.org.

Featured Artists

Naomi Chambers is a painter and assemblage sculptor born in Pittsburgh in 1987. After receiving an undergraduate degree in Studio Arts and Marketing, she took the leap to be a full-time artist in 2013. In 2017, she worked with a collective of artists to open FlowerHouse, a community art studio and creative space in Wilkinsburg offering workshops and classes to the predominantly Black community. In 2017, she was also awarded the Investing In Professional Artist grant from the Heinz Endowment and Pittsburgh Foundation.

Born in 1995 on a serendipitous Saturday, Bulumko Mbete is a creative practitioner with multicultural heritage. She is based in liminal spaces. Bulumko Mbete undertakes research in different forms of craft and design methodologies which are predominantly performed by women in Southern Africa. Her current research focuses on this form of craft and design as indigenous knowledge systems and archives. Her work is influenced by this mode of storytelling and production. She creates a framework to communicate generational traditions and gestures of love using textile, beading, natural dyeing and weaving.

Afrooz Partovi is an artist-architect who explores intangible dimensions of time and space through immersive technologies and time-based media. Her work delves into absences as vessels to trace what has been forgotten, erased, or transformed into nonexistence. Digital realms serve as both medium and metaphor in this exploration, challenging the primacy of physicality as the definitive marker of presence. Her work explores how the recontextualization of absences in digital realms can uncover deeper narratives of resistance and resilience.

Photography by Aaron Blum