In the sixth round of commissions for the Tent Series, the Moody Center for the Arts extends its engagement with Houston-based artists by inviting Tay Butler, Loc Huynh, and Virginia L. Montgomery (VLM) to create large-scale temporary artworks that will foster conversation throughout the 2026 academic year. Featured on Provisional Campus Facilities (PCF) Tents, located on the south side of Rice University’s campus, across Loop Road from Herring Hall, these three works offer poignant expressions of creativity, innovation, and connection.

Cafeteria by Yifan Jiang is the next installation in the Moody’s Off the Wall series. It was inspired by Jiang’s frequent visits to the Brochstein Pavilion while she audited philosophy classes at Rice University during her two-year Core Residency Program at the Glassell School of Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. To create this work, Jiang drew from Houston’s culinary histories, illustrating pastries through an expressive, freehand approach. Overlaid with acrylic paint, the mural depicts the silhouettes of windswept oak trees, birds in flight, and passing students, their shadows mirroring the world outside. In this space where contemplation and leisure intersect, Jiang’s Cafeteria raises questions about what we know, what reality is, and where it begins to slip into a dream.

The Moody’s fall 2025 exhibition focuses on the topic of biomorphism as seen through the lens of seven international artists. Their respective work highlights the impact of new technologies and industrial manufacturing processes on ever-changing relationships between the human body and the natural world.