Feminist Legacy Planning Workshop with Monika Fabijanska & Betsy Damon

Tuesday, July 11, 6-8 PM

Pen and Brush
29 East 22nd Street, New York, NY 10010
(212) 475-3669 info@penandbrush.org

RSVP

The workshop accompanies The Feminist Institute’s Memory Lab and Exhibition who’s afraid of feminist archives? curated by Monika Fabijanska, in collaboration with Helena Shaskevich, at Pen and Brush, June 15 - July 15.

More about the exhibition

More about The Feminist Institute’s Memory Lab

Betsy Damon: Water Talks
PREORDER HERE

Book launch: Betsy Damon in conversation with
John-Scott Legg, the Director of SteinerBooks

Wednesday, April 6, 7 PM

La MaMa Galleria
47 Great Jones Street
New York, NY 10003
tel. 212.505.2476

“I have lived on Planet Earth for eighty-three years. I have seen so much change, and that includes advances in living standards for millions of people on the one hand, and the increasing destruction of the environment on the other. Somehow, we must find a middle path. This is why Betsy wrote this book. All people need to be empowered to know their waters and to take charge of lifesaving decisions.”
—Dr. Jane Goodall, DBE

“As living systems, we are interconnected, reliant on our environment for the air we breathe and the water that sustains us. Damon identifies the barriers to clean water, but simultaneously offers the tools needed to create change and clarifies the key role artists play in the process.”
—Christine Filippone, Ph.D., Terra Smithsonian Senior Fellow, Smithsonian American Art Museum

In Water Talks, artist Betsy Damon offers much-needed wisdom on water we all can benefit from, whether you are an artist, a scientist, or an engineer. Damon has worked over the course of her 40 year-long career with communities around the world across geopolitical and cultural boundaries on water. The book is a great combination of empirical knowledge and exciting scientific information on water; it offers numerous examples, both accessible and practical, of planning, designing, and implementing community-based projects on water. I find this book an absolute must-have in educating, transforming, inspiring, and mentoring the next generation.
—Dr. Changwoo Ahn, Professor, Environmental Science and Policy, George Mason University

“Of the many things that humans take for granted—the sun, the wind, the soil—water, as Betsy Damon beautifully states in so many ways, is the thread that binds all life systems from sociological to ecological.”
—Pliny Fisk, founder and director of Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems

“Betsy Damon shows us that the road to awareness and action always begins with listening and connectivity.”
—Julie Reiss, Editor, Art, Theory and Practice in the Anthropocene (2019)

MORE ON BETSY DAMON

Session The Radical Outdoors: Betsy Damon’s feminist performances and eco-justice collaborations in the U.S. and China
Session ID #9460
Chairs: Monika Fabijanska, Independent Art Historian and Curator
Dr. Christine A. Filippone, Millersville University
2022 College Art Association Annual Conference
Friday, March 4, 2022, 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM (online only)

Presenters:
Monika Fabijanska, Independent Curator
Out In the Open: Betsy Damon’s Street Performances and Transnational Social Practice
Petra Poelzl, Independent Researcher, Vienna, Austria
The reception and impact of Betsy Damon’s Keepers of the Waters in China (1995) and Tibet (1996)
Dr. Christina Filippone, Millersville University, US
From Social Justice to Eco-Justice: Feminist Collaboration in the Work of Betsy Damon
Rong Xie, Independent Artist, London UK
A Journey with Water: Betsy Damon in China

Abstract:

Lucy Lippard jokingly called artists who deal with pollution and waste “Garbage Girls.” These ecofeminists challenged the definition of art and proposed a truly radical genre – the art of repairing environmental damage. Betsy Damon has worked globally to preserve living water using social justice tools: activism and community-building, both central to her feminist practice since the 1970s. A leader among lesbian activists in New York City, she co-edited the third issue of Heresies, Lesbian Art and Artists (1977). Her early performance work addressed the erasure of women’s narratives from history and their unspeakable subjects: mutilation and rape. Performing outdoors in the streets, her collaborative approach, and engagement with transnational feminism, all informed her social practice focused on water. In the mid-1990s, she organized Keepers of the Waters, collaborative public performances with local artists in China and Tibet. An early example of transcultural socially engaged art, Keepers of the Water left an indelible mark on avant-garde art in South-West China and led to her award-winning eco-art project Living Water Garden in Chengdu, a six-acre city park demonstrating water purification through natural processes.

Betsy Damon is among the most relevant pioneer feminist artists today and there is a growing interest in her practice globally. Papers in this session will discuss Damon’s feminist collaboration (Dr. Christine Filippone) and radical outdoor performance (Monika Fabijanska) as the basis for later projects of social practice and eco-justice. Petra Poelzl’s paper and Rong Xie’s film will consider Damon’s influence on generations of Chinese artists and activists.

OF CREATION /
OF POTENTIAL
Flaherty Seminar Program 3
Moderated by Monika Fabijanska
In conversation with artist Cecilia Vicuña

Sunday, December 5, 2021 7:30pm

UnionDocs
322 Union Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11211
ticket info coming soon!

PROGRAM 3

350 MYA (2016) by Terra Long, 5’, 16mm
Becoming Extinct (Wild Grass) (2017) by Elke Marhöfer, 23’, 16mm to digital
Kon Kon (2010) by Cecilia Vicuña, 54’, Digital

TRT: 82 mins

When the land is exhausted and the sea is poisoned and species are dying off, how can the earth communicate its needs and pass on its knowledge of growth and survival for the future? The filmmakers in this program look towards the earth with sensualist and materialist eyes, seeking to discover ancient ways of communing with the natural elements and creating new ways of being and perceiving through film. As Cecilia Vicuña writes, “To recover memory is to recover unity: / To be one with the sky and the sea / To feel the Earth as your own skin / is the only way to pleasure Her.” Immersed in this pleasure, the earth communes with the human, and through our participation, transforms us.

2021 Flaherty NYC Programmers: Kelsey White and L u m i a

More information

Betsy Damon in conversation with Monika Fabijanska
Wednesday, October 20, 7 PM (door opens at 6)
The gallery will be open from 6 PM to allow guests to view the show before the event.

Masks and the proof of vaccination with ID (for those over the age of 12) are required to enter the gallery.

The conversation will also be streamed on Instagram Live @lamamagalleria

La MaMa Galleria
47 Great Jones Street
New York, NY 10003
tel. 212.505.2476

A rare opportunity to hear Betsy Damon discuss her early performance practice, this conversation accompanies the exhibition Betsy Damon. Passages: Rites and Rituals at the La MaMa Galleria through November 21, 2021 (Thu-Sun, 1-7 PM).

ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVISM - TFAP ECOFEMINISMS, PART 1
The Feminist Art Project Day of Panel(s) @CAA
Live Session and Q&A: Fri. February 12, 5-6:30 PM EST Free, TFAP registration required

109th CAA Annual Conference (complete program)
February 10–13, 2021

Presenters:
Alicia Grullón, artist, CUNY and School of Visual Arts
Notes from an Artist: From Climate Change to Pandemic in the Bronx
Monika Fabijanska, independent art historian and curator
The Evolution of ecofeminim(s)
Diane Burko, artist
My 50 Year Journey from Feminist Activist to Environmental Activist: From Observer to Investigator to Communicator

Taking my exhibition ecofeminism(s) (Thomas Erben Gallery, 2020) as a starting point, my presentation The evolution of ecofeminism(s) will discuss how the legacy of the pioneers of ecofeminist art has been continued, developed or opposed. Ecofeminist art of the 1970s was largely defined by spiritual feminism, leading by the mid-1980s to activist positions which resulted in their inventing some of most radical art forms. The historical perspective acquired over the last fifty years reveals how revolutionary the work of pioneer feminist artists was, and how relevant it remains in the era of #MeToo Movement, climate change, and the decolonialization activisms in the U.S. 

This session aligns with both the Committee on Women in the Arts 50/50 Initiative and the CAA's 2021 theme of climate crisis.

Image: Kai Lumumba Barrow and Gallery of the Streets, ECOHYBRIDITY: Love Song for NOLA. a visual [black] opera in 5 movements, 2015 ©Kai Lumumba Barrow. Courtesy of the artist.

SPIRITUAL ECOFEMINISM AND PATRIARCHAL GODS:
THE ART OF BILGE FRIEDLAENDER, HELÈNE AYLON AND JOAN JONAS

Conference registration required

109th CAA Annual Conference (complete program)
February 10–13, 2021; recorded sessions available through March 15

Chair: Monika Fabijanska
Presenters:
Mira Friedlaender, Director, Bilge Friedlaender’s Estate
Bilge Friedlaender’s Cedar Forest
Rachel Federman, Ph.D., Associate Curator, The Morgan Library & Museum
On the Path: Helène Aylon’s Earth Ambulance (1982) and two sacs en route (1985)
Jovana Stokic, Ph.D., School of Visual Arts
Emergent Ecologies in the Works of Joan Jonas

The recognition by pioneer ecofeminist artists that Western patriarchal philosophy and religions have served to subordinate and exploit both women and nature is particularly resonant in the era of #MeToo Movement and climate change. This session will discuss three alternative approaches to ecofeminist critique of patriarchal religious or mythological systems.

In her 1980s works about Gilgamesh, Bilge Friedlaender (1934-2000) exposed the motif of the Sumerian king cutting the sacred cedar forest in quest for fame. Her questioning of the myth of the male hero corresponds to Helène Aylon’s (1931-2020) ecofeminist activist projects, rooted in the critique of the Torah as a patriarchal system of belief, and of gender roles in Judaism.  Joan Jonas (b.1936), working from myths, has creatively transformed roles assigned to women in society since the 1970s, predating the theory of gender performativity. In Moving Off the Land II (2019), she transformed the role of a Witch into its enlightened version of a Guide/Teacher that women can play in postmodernity—when both gender roles and speciesism have been questioned. 

This session aligns with both the Committee on Women in the Arts 50/50 Initiative and the CAA's 2021 theme of climate crisis.

Image: Joan Jonas, Moving Off the Land II, 2019, video still, courtesy of the artist

AVIVA RAHMANI: FROM ECOFEMINISM TO CLIMATE JUSTICE

109th CAA Annual Conference (complete program)
February 10–13, 2021; recorded sessions available through March 15

Prerecorded session available Feb. 9 - Mar. 15; live Q&A: Wed. February 10, 2-2:30 PM EST
Conference registration required

Chair: Robert R. Shane, Ph.D., College of Saint Rose in Albany, NY
Presenters:
Rebecca Lowery, MOCA, Los Angeles
Tender Investigations: The Early Work of Aviva Rahmani
Monika Fabijanska, independent art historian and curator, New York
Models of Healing after Rape and Ecocide: The Art of Aviva Rahmani
Chave Maeve Krivchenia, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Rock Formations: Aviva Rahmani's “Blue Rocks” (2002)
Gale Elston, Law Offices of Gale P. Elston, PC, New York
Aviva Rahmani’s use of the Visual Artists’ Rights Act and Eminent Domain Law as a Medium in Her Artwork “Blued Trees Symphony”
Aviva Rahmani, discussant

Ecoartist, feminist, and composer Aviva Rahmani has been engaged with transdisciplinary art practices and social/ecojustice for over 50 years. Leading her performance group American Ritual Theater (1968-1971), Rahmani was one of the first artists to treat the topic of rape and went on to play a formative role in Ablutions (1972) with Suzanne Lacy, Sandra Orgel, and Judy Chicago. Since 1989 she has pioneered ecoart projects, such as Ghost Nets (1989-2000) and her continentally-scaled Blued Trees Symphony and Opera (2015-present), which not only address climate change, but make major changes to ecosystems through small-scale but strategic interventions she calls “trigger points”—the focus of her interdisciplinary PhD research. This conference session is similarly an intervention that seeks to make a major change by introducing Rahmani’s body of work to art historians, evaluate her legacy thus far, and engage with her current projects that address the most pressing issues of our time.

This session aligns with both the Committee on Women in the Arts 50/50 Initiative and the CAA's 2021 theme of climate crisis.

Image: Aviva Rahmani, Bed of Nets, 1992. Courtesy of the artist

ecofeminism(s) 

PUBLIC PROGRAM ONLINE: ZOOM CONVERSATIONS WITH THE ARTISTS
moderated by ecofeminism(s) curator, Monika Fabijanska

September 16, 6:30 PM EST
Raquel Cecilia Mendieta, niece and goddaughter of Ana Mendieta
Mira Friedlaender, daughter of Bilge Friedlaender

Raquel Cecilia Mendieta is a filmmaker, writer, and video artist most known for her recent films on her aunt, artist Ana Mendieta. Her films have screened at film festivals and art museums world-wide. She is the Associate Administrator for the Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection and was responsible for overseeing the digital restoration of the artist’s works on film and video. She is currently working on a feature length documentary about the life and art of Ana Mendieta.

Mira Friedlaender is an artist living in New York City, and has exhibited  locally and internationally. Her work has been featured in the New York Times and Bomb, she is a recent fellow in the Art & Law Program and has held public facing residencies at the American Center in Bangladesh and Recess in New York City. She is the Director of the Bilge Friedlaender Estate and co-curated Bilge Friedlaender: Words, Numbers, Lines at Arter in Istanbul (2016). 

MORE ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Image: Ana Mendieta (Cuban American, 1948-1985), Bacayu (Esculturas Rupestres) [Light of Day (Rupestrian Sculptures)], 1981/2019. Black and white photograph, 40 x 55 in © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co.

Spotlight on Ecofeminism(s)

September 10, 6:30 PM EST
Exhibition curator Monika Fabijanska
Gallerist Thomas Erben
Christie’s Education’s Julie Reiss

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

This complimentary webinar explores the critically acclaimed group exhibition ecofeminism(s) at the Thomas Erben Gallery this Summer/Fall 2020 in New York. Praised for its relevance and curatorial vision by The New York Times and Art in America, the survey ranges from art by early eco-feminists such as Agnes Denes and Ana Mendieta to present-day artists Mary Mattingly and Hanae Utamura. Ecofeminist art emerged in the 1970s and 80s, and continues to be embraced both as a historical and a contemporary phenomenon. Exhibition curator Monika Fabijanska and gallerist Thomas Erben will join Christie’s Education’s Julie Reiss for a discussion about the show’s timeliness and the increasing centrality in the art world of art grounded in ecological and other human rights concerns. The discussion will be followed by a Q & A session.

MORE ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Image: Installation view of ecofeminism(s) curated by Monika Fabijanska, left to right: Andrea Bowers, Helène Aylon, Eliza Evans, Sonya Kelliher-Combs, Hanae Utamura, Betsy Damon, Aviva Rahmani. Courtesy of Thomas Erben Gallery, New York, June/July 2020 (photo: Andreas Vesterlund).

ecofeminism(s) 

PUBLIC PROGRAM ONLINE: ZOOM CONVERSATIONS WITH THE ARTISTS
moderated by ecofeminism(s) curator, Monika Fabijanska

July 22, 6:30 PM EST
Betsy Damon
Eliza Evans 
Carla Maldonado
Eleanor Heartney, art writer, contributing editor, Art in America

Betsy Damon (American, b. 1940) is water artist whose public work and living systems have received widespread acclaim. She created important feminist ritual performances in public space in New York: 7,000 Year Old Woman (1976-79), Blind Beggar Woman (1979-81), A Rape Memory (1981-83), The Shrine for Everywoman (1985-1990), and A Mediation With Stones for the Survival of the Planet (1983-89), and exhibited at P.S.1 in the 1980s. The installation The Memory of Clean Water shown at the Everhart Museum, traveled to many museums, 1986-91. At the age of 50, Damon changed the focus of her art to center on water, its conservation and protection, and its impact on the society. Among her large scale projects mobilizing art, science and communities around local water problems, are those on the Cheyenne River, ND (2019), in Larimer, PA (2012-2016), Olympic Forest Park, Beijing, China (2002-06), for the Beijing Bureau of Hydraulic Research & Engineering, China (2001-2003), and Living Water Garden, Chengdu, China (1996).

Eliza Evans experiments with sculpture, print, video, and textiles to identify disconnections and absurdities in social, economic, and ecological systems. The initial parameters of each work are carefully researched and then evolve as a result of interaction with people, time, and weather. Evans was born in a rustbelt steel town and raised in rural Appalachia. She currently splits her time between New York City and the Hudson Valley. Her work was exhibited at the Chautauqua Institution, Chautauqua, NY (2019), Edward Hopper House Museum, Nyack, NY (2019), Chashama Sculpture Field, Pine Plains, NY (2018), BRIC, Brooklyn (2017), and Purchase College, Purchase, NY (2017). Residencies include the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, UC Santa Barbara (2020), Bronx Museum AIM, and Franconia Sculpture Park, Shafer, MN (both 2019). Evans holds an MFA from SUNY Purchase College in visual art and a Ph.D. in economic sociology from the University of Texas at Austin.

Carla Maldonado (Brasilian, b. 1986) is a multimedia artist, working in photography, film and installation. Her work responds to socio-political issues; patriarchy and the environmental crisis, and explores the struggle of progressive movements in Bolsonaro’s Brazil, and her immigrant experience in Trump’s era U.S. Maldonado's intuitively observational process is based on photographic and video documentation of environments she navigates and people she encounters – focusing on rebels, misfits and revolutionaries. She showed at the Satellite Art Show in Miami and Brooklyn; Film Fest at the Farm, Rhinebeck, NY; School of Visual Arts, NYC, SoMad Studio, NYC (all 2019); Barcelona Planet Film Festival, Spain (2018); and The Knockdown Center, Brooklyn (2017). She has BFA in Fashion Design from Senai Cetiqt, Rio de Janeiro, 2007; and MFA in Photography, Video & Related Media, SVA in New York, 2019. Maldonado lives and works in New York City and is currently AIM Fellow at The Bronx Museum.

Eleanor Heartney is an art critic and author and has written extensively on contemporary art issues for many publications, including Art in America, Artpress, Artnews, Art and Auction, The New Art Examiner, the Washington Post and the New York Times. Her books include Critical Condition: American Culture at the Crossroads, Postmodernism, Defending Complexity: Art Politics and the New World Order, Postmodern Heretics: The Catholic Imagination in Contemporary Art, Art and Today and Doomsday Dreams: the Apocalyptic Imagination in Contemporary Art. She is a co-author of After the Revolution: Women who Transformed Contemporary Art, and The Reckoning: Women Artists of the New Millennium. She is past President of AICA USA, the American section of the International Art Critics Association. Her awards include the College Art Association’s Frank Jewett Mather Award and the French government’s Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

MORE ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Image: Betsy Damon (American, b. 1940), The Memory of Clean Water, 1985, mixed media: paper pulp, grass, minerals ©Betsy Damon. Courtesy of the artist

ecofeminism(s) 

PUBLIC PROGRAM ONLINE: ZOOM CONVERSATIONS WITH THE ARTISTS

moderated by ecofeminism(s) curator, Monika Fabijanska

July 15, 6:30 PM EST

Aviva Rahmani
Sonya Kelliher-Combs 
Jessica Segall
Candice Hopkins, curator, writer, and a citizen of Carcross/Tagish First Nation

Pioneering ecological artist Aviva Rahmani (American, b. 1945) exhibits, publishes and presents internationally. Her project, The Blued Trees Symphony (2015-present), legally challenges expanding fossil fuel infrastructures with copyrighted and sonified installations across miles of North America. Her work has been included in exhibitions at the Independent Museum of Contemporary Art, Cyprus; the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Colorado; the Hudson River Museum, NY; the Cincinnati Center for Contemporary Art, Ohio; and the Joseph Beuys 100 days of Conference Pavilion, for the Venice Biennale, Italy. Her work has won numerous grants, fellowships and been written about internationally. She is an Affiliate with the Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado at Boulder; gained her PhD from the University of Plymouth, UK and received her BFA and MFA at the California Institute of the Arts. She is currently completing a residency with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council on Governors Island.

Sonya Kelliher-Combs (Native American, b. 1969) is an artist of mixed decent: Iñupiaq from the North Slope of Alaska, Athabascan from the Interior, German and Irish. She uses imagery and symbols that speak about culture and the life of her ancestors, and marginalization and the struggles of Indigenous peoples. She participated in numerous group exhibitions, including at Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., 2020; Minneapolis Institute of Art, 2019; Korundi Museum, Rovaniemi, Finland, 2018-19; John Jay College, NYC, 2018; Northern Norway Art Museum, Tromsø, 2016; Nordamerika Native Museum, Zurich, 2015; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 2013; National Museum of the American Indian, NYC, 2010; Museum of Art & Design, NYC, 2005; Cheongju International Craft Biennial, South Korea, 2005. Solo exhibitions include Minus Space, Brooklyn, NY 2019; the Northern Norway Art Museum, Svalbard, Norway, 2018; Institute of American Indian Art, Santa Fe, 2006; Anchorage Museum of History and Art, Anchorage, 2005; and Alaska State Museum, Juneau, 2001.

Jessica Segall is a multidisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Her work has been screened and exhibited internationally including The Fries Museum, the Havana Bienal, The National Gallery of Indonesia, The Queens Museum of Art, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, The Inside Out Museum, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Vojvodina, The Mongolian National Modern Art Gallery, The National Museum of Jewish American History and The National Symposium for Electronic Art. Segall received grants from The Pollock Krasner Foundation, The Rema Hort Mann Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, The Harpo Foundation and Art Matters and attended residencies at Princeton University, The Van Eyck Academie, The MacDowell Colony and Skowhegan. Her work has been featured in Cabinet Magazine, The New York Times, Sculpture Magazine, Mousse Magazine and Art in America. She received her BA from Bard College and MFA from Columbia University.

Candice Hopkins is a curator and writer and a citizen of Carcross/Tagish First Nation. She lives between Albuquerque, New Mexico and Toronto, Canada. She is Senior Curator of the 2019 and 2021 editions of the Toronto Biennial of Art. Hopkins was co-curator of major exhibitions including the Canadian Pavilion for the 58th Venice Biennial featuring the media art collective Isuma; the 2018 SITE Santa Fe biennial, Casa Tomada; documenta 14 in Athens, Greece and Kassel, Germany; Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art; and Close Encounters: The Next 500 Year. Her writing is published widely and her recent essays and presentations include "The Appropriation Debates (or The Gallows of History)" for MIT Press; “Outlawed Social Life," for South as a State of Mind; and "The Gilded Gaze: Wealth and Economies on the Colonial Frontier," for the documenta 14 Reader. 

MORE ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Image: Aviva Rahmani (American, b. 1945), Physical Education, 1973, performance documentation: slide projection ©Aviva Rahmani. Courtesy of the artis

ecofeminism(s) 

PUBLIC PROGRAM ONLINE: ZOOM CONVERSATIONS WITH THE ARTISTS
moderated by ecofeminism(s) curator, Monika Fabijanska

July 8, 6:30 PM EST
Lynn Hershman Leeson
Mary Mattingly 
Hanae Utamura
Julie Reiss, Ph.D., Christie’s Education

Lynn Hershman Leeson (American, b. 1941) is artist and filmmaker acclaimed for the pioneering use of new technologies through which she addresses issues such as trauma, identity loss, and the relationship between the real and the virtual. Her work in media-based technology pioneered digital art forms. She also made some of the earliest works that used artificial intelligence, biological computing, and DNA manipulation. As a film director she wrote, directed and produced Strange Culture, Conceiving Ada, and Teknolust, all starring Tilda Swinton, which screened at the Sundance, Toronto and Berlin festivals; and a 2011 groundbreaking documentary !Women Art Revolution. Leeson’s 2014 retrospective organized at the ZKM Karlsruhe traveled to Yerba Buena Center, 2017. Her works are in the collections of MoMA, Whitney Museum, ZKM, LACMA, SFMoMA, Walker Art Center, Berkeley Museum of Art, and National Gallery of Art of Canada. She received Siggraph Lifetime Achievement Award, Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica, Guggenheim Fellowship, USA Artist Fellowship, NEA, and College Art Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

Mary Mattingly (American, b. 1978) is a photographer and sculptor. She founded Swale, an edible landscape on a barge in New York City to circumvent public land laws. Currently, Mattingly is artist in residence at the Brooklyn Public Library and preparing to launch "Public Water" – a public sculpture about NYC's drinking watershed with More Art. In 2018 she worked with BRIC Arts to build "What Happens After" which involved dismantling a military vehicle and deconstructing its mineral supply chain. Her work has been exhibited in museums such as the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de la Habana, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Brooklyn Museum, Storm King, the International Center of Photography, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Palais de Tokyo. Her work has been featured in Aperture, Art in America, Artforum, Sculpture Magazine, The New York Times, Le Monde Magazine, New Yorker, and on BBC News, NPR, on Art21.

Hanae Utamura (Japanese, b. 1980) is multimedia artist, working in video, performance, installation, and sculpture. She received her MA from Chelsea College of Art and Design, and her BA from Goldsmiths, University of London and exhibits extensively in Asia, Europe and the U.S. Numerous international residencies and fellowships include Akademie Schloss Solitude (Stuttgart), Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin), PACT Zollverein (Essen), Art Omi (Hudson, NY), Santa Fe Art Institute Residency, Aomori Contemporary Art Center (Aomori), National Museum of Contemporary Art, Changdong Art Studio (Seoul), Seoul Art Space_GEUMCHEON (Seoul), Florence Trust (London). She has been awarded NYFA Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program, Shiseido Art Egg Award, Japanese Ministry of Culture Grant, Pola Art Foundation, UNESCO-Aschberg Bursary Award, and Axis/Florence Trust Award. In 2019 she was a visiting scholar at New York University as a part of Japan – U.S. Exchange Friendship Program in the Art. Utamura is based in New York and Buffalo, NY.

Julie Reiss is a pioneering scholar in the field of Installation art. She is the author of From Margin to Center: The Spaces of Installation Art (MIT Press, 1999), in addition to numerous articles and reviews. Julie has spoken on panels related to art and the climate crisis including “Shifting Domains: Artists Respond to the Threatened Ecological Commons (Marfa Ballroom Dialogues, 2013), and “Landscape and Anthropocene” (College Art Association, 2016). She chaired a panel on art in the Anthropocene at the 2017 Conference for the Council for European Studies. She is the editor of Art, Theory and Practice in the Anthropocene (Vernon Press, 2018). In 2019 she organized the symposium “The Role of Art in the Environmental Crisis” at Christie’s Education, and was the guest critic on the same theme at The Brooklyn Rail. She directs Modern and Contemporary Art and the Market, an accredited MA program at Christie’s Education. 

MORE ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Image: Mary Mattingly (American, b. 1978), Life of Objects, 2013, Archival Pigment Print, 30 x 30 in. Edition 5/5 ©Mary Mattingly. Courtesy of Robert Mann Gallery