Join us for a fantastic opportunity to connect and network with fellow UC alumni and newly arrived UCEAP students from across all 10 UC campuses! Learn more about getting involved with your campus network, and other all UC activities in the capital such as our Gala Committee, UC Pride UK, UC Running Club, Mentorship Program, and Sustainability Committee.

Throughout the evening, attendees will enjoy an exclusive viewing of “Rituals & Reliquaries”, a solo show by London-based photographic artist and researcher Francesca Hummler (UCSD '19). The work engages with a crisis of faith initiated by the artist’s entry into adulthood. Through therapeutic photography, "Rituals" charts the artist's journey towards self-definition, reconciling faith, sexuality, and identity. Self-portraiture, a ritual in itself, played a transformative role, guiding the artist from despair to rediscovered faith. The exhibition was curated by Christiane Monarchi with special thanks to Antoine d'Agata, Amin Yousefi, Abraham Adams, Sarah Grice, and Violet Del Toro.

Our program will begin at 7:30pm with introductions from UC Alumni UK President Claire Frost. Guests will also hear remarks from the artist on how her experience at UCSD made a lasting impact on her artistic career.

Tickets include entry to the private exhibition, drinks, and canapes. Guests will also have the opportunity to enter a raffle for one of the pieces on display.

About UC Alumni UK

This lifelong living and learning community brings together the alumni presidents of those UC campuses with active clubs in the UK. At present, Berkeley, Berkeley Haas, Davis, Irvine, UCLA, UCLA Anderson, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz have active alumni groups in the UK. UC Alumni UK seeks to support knowledge exchange and alumni enrichment activities and foster the development of those UC campuses that are not yet active in the UK.

About the Artist

Francesca Hummler (b. 1997) is a German-American visual artist and researcher working with photography currently based in London, England. She received her B.A. in Media Arts and B.S. in Biochemistry from UC San Diego in 2019, and a Master's in Photography with distinction for her dissertation, "American Identity and Photographic Healing", from The Royal College of Art in London in 2022. Interested in issues regarding identity, she draws from her experience as the daughter of German immigrants in the United States to explore the archive, familial intimacy, and generational trauma. Influenced by the concept of photo-therapy Francesca often utilizes self-portraiture to untangle her sense of self. 

In 2021 she was selected as one of the laureates of the Carte Blanche Étudiants award and displayed her work at Paris Photo. In 2022, she won the Young Talent Award from the Vonovia Award for Photography and had her work displayed in the Sprengel Museum. Her work was collected by the Odunpazarı Modern Museum in Türkiye, featured in the Hamburg-based magazine Photonews, and she was interviewed by Deutschlandfunk Kultur. In May 2023, she had her first solo in Erlangen, Germany, quickly followed by her second solo show in London in September 2023 as a part of the Deptford X Festival. Recently, her series “Das Kuckucksei” or “The Cuckoo's Egg” was published in the January 2024 issue of Artforum magazine.