Visual Voices is a Professional Lecture Series offered by Mason Exhibitions. The purpose of the lectures are to broaden students’ exposure and vocabulary to professional work being created today. It also provides an opportunity for Art & Design students and members of the public to interact with speakers via a Q&A following their lecture, giving them the chance to exchange ideas and pose questions to the guest speakers.

If you miss the live presentations, recordings of the lectures will be available one week after the live event. Find recordings of the lectures on Mason Arts Amplified.

Visual Voices events are free to attend and open to the public. Registration is required!

For more information, please contact Jeffrey Kenney.

Thursday, September 18, 2025 @ 4:45-6:30pm

MASPAZ
Hybrid Event (Harris Theater and Zoom)

MasPaz (Federico Frum), an alumnus of Mason’s School of Art, is a Colombian-born multidisciplinary artist, based in Washington DC. He is known for his distinctive street murals that explore topics of earth preservation and indigenous peoples. He recently created the Art of the Skateboard, a series of stamps for the U.S. Postal Service. Mas Paz means 'more peace' in Spanish, a message he strives to embrace through art and philanthropy. 

He has been featured on ABC News, Telemundo and The Washington Post, among others. He has collaborated with brands such as Nike, National Geographic, Roots, Sierra Club, and Brooks Running, as well as institutions such as the Smithsonian Institution, the National Portrait Gallery, the National Gallery of Art, the New Museum, the Corcoran, the Freer and Sackler Gallery. He has also worked with numerous schools and education centers throughout the world. 

This event will be held at the Harris Theater on the GMU Fairfax campus and online via Zoom. RSVP is required to receive the Zoom link via email the day-of!

Thursday, October 9, 2025 @ 4:45pm-6:30pm

CAROLYN DRAKE
Hybrid Event (Harris Theater and Zoom)

Carolyn Drake works on long term photo-based projects seeking to interrogate dominant historical narratives and creatively reimagine them.  Her practice embraces collaboration and has in recent years melded photography with sewing, collage, and sculpture. She is interested in collapsing the traditional divide between author and subject, the real and the imaginary, challenging entrenched binaries.

Drake was born in California and studied Media/Culture and History in the early 1990s at Brown University. Following her graduation from Brown in 1994, Drake moved to New York and worked as a interactive designer for many years before departing to engage with the physical world through photography at the age of 30. 

This event will be held at the Harris Theatre on the GMU Fairfax campus and online via Zoom. RSVP is required to receive the Zoom link via email the day-of!

Thursday, October 30, 2025 @ 4:45pm-6:30pm

KAYLA E.
Hybrid Event (CFA Concert Hall and Zoom)

Kayla E. (she/her) is an award-winning Texas-born artist of Mexican American descent. She works as creative director at Fantagraphics and is a recipient of a 2023-2024 Princeton Hodder Fellowship. She is the co-founder and former President of Nat. Brut Inc., a non-profit that produces an art and literary magazine, of which she was the Editor-in-Chief for nine years. She earned her B.A. in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard University, where she served as the Art Director for the Harvard Lampoon. Precious Rubbish, her graphic novel debut, is a work of trauma recollection told in the style of post-war children’s comics. Kayla lives in North Carolina with her wife and two dogs. You can find her at kaylaework.com and on Instagram @precious.rubbish. 

This event will be held at the Center for the Arts Concert Hall on the GMU Fairfax campus and online via Zoom. RSVP is required to receive the Zoom link via email the day-of!

Thursday, November 13, 2025 @ 4:45pm - 6:30pm

TO BE ANNOUNCED

This event will be held at the Harris Theatre on the GMU Fairfax campus and online via Zoom. RSVP is required to receive the Zoom link via email the day-of!

Visual Voices lectures are now available to watch online! Mason Arts Amplified has a new look and platform to make watching and browsing arts content even easier. This online platform is a digital stage and learning space featuring curated arts experiences including livestreamed concerts, releases of previously recorded content, behind-the-scenes talks with artists, and more. It requires a free registration.

Past speakers have included:

Chemi Rosado-Seijo / Adriana Monsalve / Morgan Ashcom / Jordan Nassar / Kei Ito / Nora Krug / Andriy Dubchak / Colette Fu / Maria Gaspar / Taekyeom Lee / Mendi+Keith Obadike / Ellen Lesperance / Bahia Shehab / Jon Henry / Silas Munro / Sadie Barnette  / Sharif Bey / Rodrigo Carazas Portal  / William Christenberry  / Sonya Clark  / James Elkins  / Ann Fessler  / Sam Gilliam  / Steve Heller  / Leslie Hewitt / Steve Kurtz  / Lucy Lippard  / Ellen Lupton  / J.J. McCracken  / Dorothy Moss  / Alyce Myatt  / Laurel Nakadate / Lori Nix  / Eddie Opara / Adriana Ospina  / PARABOLA Architecture  / Michael Rakowitz  / Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz / E. Carmen Ramos  / Wendy Red Star  / Dario Robleto / Mia Eve Rollow  / Phyllis Rosenzweig  / Mario Rossero / Amanda Ross-Ho  / Rozeal (formerly Iona Rozeal Brown)  / Paul Rucker / Carrie Schneider  / Simon Schwartz  / Kuiyi Shen  / Renee Stout  / Siebren Versteeg  / Angela Washko  / Robert Whitman  / Daniel Wickerham and Malcolm Lomax / Bruce Willen  / Deborah Willis  / Krzysztof Wodiczko  / Agustina Woodgate  / The Yes Men 

Land Acknowledgement

At the place George Mason University occupies, we give greetings and thanksgivings to the recognized Virginia tribes who have lovingly stewarded these lands for millennia including the Rappahannock, Pamunkey, Upper Mattaponi, Chickahominy, Eastern Chickahominy, Nansemond, Monacan, Mattaponi, Patawomeck, and Nottaway, past, present, and future; and to the Piscataway tribes, who have lived on both sides of the river from time immemorial. The education offered here is a credit to the land that has received our students. The good they will do in this world is the harvest of the soil upon which they stand, sit, and live.