We are urgently seeking financial support for Owning Earth, an communities in Poughkeepsie and Kingston that have been deeply ambitious year-long outdoor exhibition in the Sculpture Garden at affected by the pandemic. Unison Arts in New Paltz, New York. Sited on a seven-acre outdoor A beacon of arts presentation in the Hudson Valley for more than gallery that is free and open to the public year-round, the exhibition 40 years, Unison Arts is an ideal venue for this exhibition. In the last three features land-based projects that challenge our underlying systems of years, Unison has begun to offer cutting-edge environmentally-focused ownership and domination and offer alternate models of mutuality and arts programming and has tripled the organization’s member base. reverence. Unison has established itself as one of the most innovative local arts The goals of this exhibition have become ever timelier in the face organizations in the area, having been named “Best Small Arts Center in of the global pandemic and the continuing murders of African Americans the Hudson Valley” by The Chronogram in 2019. Unison Arts draws by police. We are no longer able to ignore the intolerable cruelty of the intergenerational and interracial audiences to regular educational and systems of domination—over our environment, other species, other performing arts events and exhibitions. humans—that are so deeply entrenched in our culture and institutions. Unison Arts generates revenue primarily from ticket sales to live We face a profound reckoning, and the artists in Owning Earth will indoor events and classes. The pandemic has therefore been extremely actively facilitate dialogue around these issues, providing audiences with disruptive to the organization’s bottom line. Unison Arts is seeking tools to imagine and build a different future. immediate support in the amount of $25,000 to assist with Owning Earth Owning Earth is curated by Tal Beery, a nationally-known artist installation expenses and artist fees. Any amount contributed towards with a longstanding connection to the region. Among other works, the this goal will be greatly appreciated. artists in Owning Earth will weave flags created from site-specific soil We do not know how long social distancing requirements will be profiles, explore Indigenous visions of the future, and build outdoor in effect, but so long as they are, outdoor arts venues like Unison Arts’ laboratories to test radical climate solutions. The projects in the Sculpture Garden that audiences can safely visit are essential public exhibition lend themselves to both collaborative and pedagogical resources and ought to be supported as such. opportunities, and they will be accompanied by a robust series of public The moment we are in demands difficult conversations. We must events and craft-based workshops developed by the artists in all reflect on the troubled aspects of our past and transition towards a partnership with numerous Hudson Valley-based organizations. With more equitable and sustainable future. We are deeply gratified by the these community-based collaborations, Owning Earth programs and possibility that Owning Earth will inspire and hold space for these events will engage diverse constituencies. In this vein, we urgently need transformative experiences, and we invite you to join us in building a assistance in our efforts to build programs that can serve neighboring post-domination culture in the Hudson Valley and beyond.
Thank you for your consideration
Owning Earth | Opening 2021 at Unison Arts 68 Mountain Rest Rd, New Paltz, NY 12561 | unisonarts.org/owning-earth
Each $2,500 raised supports a single artist project, including installation expenses, maintenance, artist fee, and workshop fee. Complete exhibition budgets are available for review at your request. Volunteers and In-Kind contributions of materials, labor, or other services are also welcome.
SPONSORSHIP LEVELS
COMMUNITY PATRON $100-$249 $500 +
Recognition on Unison Arts’ website Recognition on Unison Arts’ website Invitations to exclusive tours of Owning Earth exhibition with Curator Recognition in Owning Earth printed material
Schedule a private tour of Owning Earth exhibition with Curator*
Invitation to Sponsor Appreciation Dinner at Unison Arts* SUPPORTER $250-$499 BUSINESS Recognition on Unison Arts’ website $500 + Recognition in Owning Earth printed material Invitations to exclusive tours of Owning Earth exhibition with Curator Recognition on Unison Arts’ website Invitation to Sponsor Appreciation Dinner at Unison Arts* Recognition in Owning Earth printed material
Business name mentioned at the beginning of each public workshop or * Subject to scheduling and/or budgetary limitations event, in-person or online.
Unison Arts (Unison Learning Center Inc.) is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization Schedule a private tour of Owning Earth exhibition for you and your staff dedicated to enriching cultural life and community in New York’s Mid-Hudson Valley by with Curator* making high quality arts, performances and educational experiences accessible to all. Your donation is tax-deductible to the fullest extent allowed by law. Invitation to Sponsor Appreciation Dinner at Unison Arts*
Owning Earth | Opening 2021 at Unison Arts 68 Mountain Rest Rd, New Paltz, NY 12561 | unisonarts.org/owning-earth
PROSPECTUS
Owning Earth is an outdoor sculptural exhibition in the Sculpture Garden at Jean-Marc Superville Sovak, "Under Every Church Here Lies a Mosque", Manifesta 8 Biennial, Murcia, Spain, 2010 Unison Arts in New Paltz, New York. The show consists of 19 artistic responses to systems of human domination over our environments and the urgent need to enact futures guided by mutuality and reverence. The exhibition will be accompanied by a public event series and educational programs.
SHOW DATES: JUNE 2021 – JUNE 2022
ARTISTS
THEME: MATERIALMATERIAL WORLDS WORLDS THEME: ARTART FOR FOR NON NON-HUMANS-HUMANS Alex Young // Matthew Friday Eleanor King // Lucy Pullen Brooke Singer Joel Olzak Colin Lyons Michael Asbill // Derek Stroup Robert C Beck Sarah Max Beck
THEME: IM/POSSIBLEIM/POSSIBLE FUTURES FUTURES THEME: PRECARITYPRECARITY Christy Gast Eileen Wold Erin Antonak Sam Spillman Sariah Park
Emilie Houssart Colin Lyons, The Laboratory of Everlasting Solutions (2020) [Proposal] THEME: VISIBILITYVISIBILITY AND AND RESTORATION RESTORATION how to perform an abortion (Maureen Connor // Kadambari Baxi // Landon Newton) CURATOR Jean-Marc Superville Sovak Tal Beery
THEME: ROOTSROOTS AND AND ROOTING ROOTING ASSISTANT CURATOR Melinda Kiefer Erin Antonak Alejandro Chellet
Eliza Evans SCULPTURE COMMITTEE MEMBERS
Michael Asbill
Eliza Evans
Matthew Friday
Karali Pitzele
Sarah Warren
Owning Earth | Opening 2021 at Unison Arts 68 Mountain Rest Rd, New Paltz, NY 12561 | unisonarts.org/owning-earth MATERIAL WORLDS
ALEX YOUNG// MATTHEW FRIDAY http://www.worldshaving.info/ https://www.matthewfriday.net/
Proposal Title: Solar Sallet
Adapting the tradition of public water fountain sculptures and Greek amphora, the artists’ novel solar array utilizes the dye made from the pokeweed berry as a photosensitizer in the production of solar cells to power a hydroponic water circulation system. Alex Young is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, and curator who explores both humans and other-than-humans collaborative shaping of their environments. Presently, Young’s work explores ruderal futures—or speculative forms of co-creation with species best adapted to thrive in environments distressed by human activity. Young’s projects have been presented at Conflux Festival, Flux Factory, Kiasma Museum, ACC Galerie Weimar, Stadtische Museen Zittau, Spanien 19C, San Diego Art Institute, Beyond/In Western New York Biennial, UB Art Gallery, Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, and more.
Matthew Friday is an educator and transdisciplinary artist who develops apparatuses and systems that examine and provoke new political ecologies. He has spoken internationally about ecology, aesthetics and politics at venues such as NYU and the Rubin Foundation. His essays have appeared in October, the Journal of Modern Craft, the Journal Aesthetics and Protest, and the Brooklyn Rail. He is an active member of the ecosystem research and design collective SPURSE. He has exhibited at Wave Hill, MassMOCA, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Grand Arts, White Columns, Bemis Art Center, Kunsthal Aarhus and the BMW Owning Earth | Opening 2021 at Unison Arts Guggenheim LAB. 68 Mountain Rest Rd, New Paltz, NY 12561 | unisonarts.org/owning-earth
MATERIAL WORLDS
BROOKE SINGER http://www.bsing.net/
Proposal Title: Site Profile Flag
Flag created from site-specific soil profiles herald a new bioregional politics. Brooke Singer engages technoscience as an artist, educator, nonspecialist and collaborator. Her work lives “on” and “off” line in the form of websites, workshops, photographs, maps, installations, public art and performances that often involves participation in pursuit of social change.
She is Associate Professor of New Media at Purchase College, State University of New York, a former fellow at Eyebeam Art + Technology Center (2010-11), co-founder of the art, technology and activist group Preemptive Media (2002-2008) and co- founder of La Casita Verde (2013-).
She is in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Microsoft and Melva Bucksbaum and Raymond Learsy.
Owning Earth | Opening 2021 at Unison Arts 68 Mountain Rest Rd, New Paltz, NY 12561 | unisonarts.org/owning-earth MATERIAL WORLDS
COLIN LYONS https://www.colinlyons.ca/
Proposal Title: The Laboratory of Everlasting Solutions
An evolving printmaking-based installation in which the artist adopts the role of practical alchemist, the project explores the emerging field of geoengineering, its esoteric technologies and histories, and imagines highly impractical techno-solutionist prototypes.
Colin Lyons grew up in Petrolia: ‘Canada’s original oil boomtown,' which fueled his interests in industrial ruins and sacrificial landscapes. Fusing sculpture, printmaking, and site-specific installation, his works consider preservation in an age of planned obsolescence and resource depletion, and reflect on issues around geo-engineering, urban renewal and brownfield rehabilitation practices. Lyons' work has been shown in 25 solo exhibitions across Canada and the United States, as well as in group exhibitions internationally. Recent projects have been presented at Platform Stockholm (Stockholm), The Soap Factory (Minneapolis), and CIRCA art actual (Montreal). He has been the recipient of project grants from Canada Council for the Arts and The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, among others. In 2016, he was awarded the Grant Wood Fellowship in Printmaking from The University of Iowa. Lyons' projects have been featured in Art in Print, Magenta Magazine, Le Devoir, and The Globe and Mail, among others. He currently lives in Binghamton, New York, where he is an assistant professor at Binghamton University (SUNY).
Owning Earth | Opening 2021 at Unison Arts 68 Mountain Rest Rd, New Paltz, NY 12561 | unisonarts.org/owning-earth MATERIAL WORLDS
ROBERT C BECK https://www.rcbeck.com/
Proposal Title: Reversible Reactions
This installation combines solar technology, hydrophilic bacteria, and water pumps to question the notion of impact, from new pollution to primordial biochemical processes, by considering it as a potential tool for shaping the environment.
Robert C Beck is a multidisciplinary visual artist working with hybrid processes that combine printmaking, photography, organic matter, and technology to construct life support systems for biological media.
Beck is cofounder of studioHydrostatic, a collaborative bioart research duo building sculptural installations that engage public perception of Owning Earth | Opening 2021 at Unison Arts human ecology by exploring its direct impact on biological systems.68 Mountain Rest Rd, New Paltz, NY 12561 | unisonarts.org/owning-earth PRECARITY
EILEEN WOLD
http://www.eileenwold.com/
Proposal Title: Security Dome Dew Drops
Playful reflective surfaces mimicking dew droplets punctuate the wooded corridor. The project offers an eye-opening exercise in self-awareness and a startling reminder of our inability to extricate ourselves from larger systems of control.
Eileen Wold received her MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and currently teaches a critical studies course in the Studio Art MFA program there. Wold is the co-founder of the online artist publication Black Bucket Essays and has been organizing group exhibitions through a pop-up gallery space she created in her studio building outside of Seattle. Her research and art practice examines the issues of power production, environmental conservation, and ecological Owning Earth | Opening 2021 at Unison Arts 68 Mountain Rest Rd, New Paltz, NY 12561 | unisonarts.org/owning-earth vulnerability.
PRECARITY
SAM SPILLMAN https://www.samspillmanart.com/
Proposal Title: Untitled (Pond House)
A 1960s wooden bunk house from a nearby Ukrainian Youth Summer Camp will be rebuilt above the pond at Unison Arts, this piece continues the artists exploration of the confrontation and overwhelming power of weather and time on the built environment. The interior walls will be finished to resemble a parlor and the floor will be cut away to reveal the pond beneath the structure. A portion of the roof will be removed to let natural elements such as light and rain into the interior of the structure.
Sam Spillman is an artist who creates architectural environments that embody anxiety and suspense through an exploration of psychological states in physical space. Spillman’s site-specific installations use existing architecture as a point of departure for interactions that make the familiar unfamiliar. He has an MFA from the School of Art + Design at Purchase College SUNY, where he is currently a Lecturer in the Sculpture Department. His work has been included in exhibitions in New York City, Westchester, Pine Plains and Ithaca NY. Owning Earth | Opening 2021 at Unison Arts 68 Mountain Rest Rd, New Paltz, NY 12561 | unisonarts.org/owning-earth VISIBILITY AND RESTORATION
HOW TO PERFORM AN ABORTION https://www.howtoperformanabortion.com/
Proposal Title: Abortion Monument
A guided path through the meadow offers intimate connection to plants used by generations of people to manage fertility and support reproductive health.
how to perform an abortion is a project of artists Maureen Connor, Kadambari Baxi, Eugenia Manwelyan, and Landon L Newton, an intergenerational group of women working to expand reproductive rights through art and pedagogy. how to perform an abortion is a learning and art project that demystifies the historical, biological and ethical controversies surrounding fertility management. “Our goal is to activate a shift in culture and law in favor of reproductive self-determination.” Connecting women with information and network to help manage fertility, while subverting the forces that challenge their right to do so, how to perform an abortion is enacted through gardens, workshops, and installations in both arts Owning Earth | Opening 2021 at Unison Arts and clinical contexts. 68 Mountain Rest Rd, New Paltz, NY 12561 | unisonarts.org/owning-earth
VISIBILITY AND RESTORATION
JEAN- MARC SUPERVILLE SOVAK http://www.supervillesovak.com/
Proposal Title: Untitled (Buried Monuments)
This project continues Sovak’s excavation of the overlooked and painful history of racism and industry in the Hudson Valley.
Jean-Marc is a multidisciplinary artist whose work deeply involves the community around him. Among an array of public art projects, Jean-Marc has built and toured a Tiny House of Steel, staged a neighborhood portrait drawing-as-oral-history storefront, constructed a brick wall with a built-in hole, produced videos of his doppelgangers and given guided tours of NYC housing projects. His work has been exhibited at the Samuel Dorsky Museum, the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Socrates Sculpture Park, Manifesta 8 European Biennial. He is the illustrator of several award-winning novels by Julie Chibbaro. He lives and works with Julie in Beacon, NY.
Owning Earth | Opening 2021 at Unison Arts 68 Mountain Rest Rd, New Paltz, NY 12561 | unisonarts.org/owning-earth ROOTS AND ROOTING
Melinda Kiefer is a multidisciplinary artist whose work examines how art provides one of the last spaces for the sensory imagination to confront and transform the monoculture that presently engulfs the world. She has been a member of performance groups participating in DIY spaces in Baltimore and Brooklyn since 2014. Recent exhibitions include SEPTEMBER Gallery, Pari Passu, Flowers for all Occasions (solo), and Contemporary Petite Gallery (NY). She has been an invited Artist in Residence at Eco Practicum. She has taught drawing classes as well as an experimental Yoga and Art Class at Purchase College, which she continued at SEPTEMBER Gallery in Hudson, NY. She is currently MELINDA KIEFER a Teaching Artist with BRIC Arts Media in Brooklyn and is http://www.melindakiefer.com/ preparing for an immersive installation with her partner Proposal Title: Grottoship: Bathtub Madonna at Hilo Art in Catskill, NY opening this fall. A dark cool dwelling, the sculpture combines popular Catholic devotional front-yard structures with elements of off-grid “earthship” design to explore essential elements of the human sacred imagination as it relates to the earth.
Owning Earth | Opening 2021 at Unison Arts 68 Mountain Rest Rd, New Paltz, NY 12561 | unisonarts.org/owning-earth ROOTS AND ROOTING ALEJANDRO CHELLET
http://www.alejandrochellet.info/
Proposal Title: The Hickster Oven
At once a sculpture and functional hearth, this piece aims to question and expose the current and growing phenomenon of ex- urban transplants to the Hudson Valley.
Alejandro Chellet is a Mexican multidisciplinary artist, independent curator and permaculture designer based between Mexico City, New York and the Hudson Valley. In his art he addresses the misplaced core principles of coexistence, the loss of connection with Nature and the political and environmental context of urban societies. His artwork ranges from social practice to site specific installations, urban interventions and performances using permaculture, artivism, improvisation, somatic movement, politics, altruism and shamanism. His artwork has been shown at festivals, museums and galleries in Europe, Asia, North, Central and South America. In 2014 with Grace Exhibition Space he started the design and development of an ongoing art and permaculture summer residency program in Rosendale, NY. In 2015 he ventured into directing Casa Viva Gallery, an artist-run space for contemporary art in Mexico City that has shown more than a hundred artists. In February 2020 he launched Artists in Action, a new and broad residency program at the community space Huerto Roma Verde in Mexico City. Owning Earth | Opening 2021 at Unison Arts 68 Mountain Rest Rd, New Paltz, NY 12561 | unisonarts.org/owning-earth ROOTS AND ROOTING
ELIZA EVANS http://eevans.net
Proposal Title: All The Way To Hell
This project exploits some unique features of U.S. private property ownership, converting 1000 individual gestures into a new form of environmental resistance at the intersection of property law, fossil fuel business practice, and bureaucracy.
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.
Owning Earth | Opening 2021 at Unison Arts 68 Mountain Rest Rd, New Paltz, NY 12561 | unisonarts.org/owning-earth ART FOR NON-HUMANS
ELEANOR KING //
LUCY PULLEN http://www.eleanorking.com/ https://www.lucypullen.com
Proposal Title: Politics & Pollinators
A living bee hive, reimagined as a monument; and a staircase, repurposed for collective decision-making.
Lucy Pullen is a Canadian artist based in New York. Her work was the subject of exhibitions at The Henry Art Gallery in Seattle; the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver; Art Metropole in Toronto; and Eleanor King is a Nova Scotian artist based in survey exhibitions at the Vancouver Art Brooklyn. She has presented solo exhibitions Gallery and the Tate Modern in London at A.I.R. Gallery, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, England among others. Current site- Southern Alberta Art Gallery, and Diaz specific installations include The Contemporary; and two-person shows at 326 University of Victoria, North in Kitchener Gallery, Confederation Centre Art Gallery, and The Perimeter Institute for and Eastern Edge. Her site-specific projects Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada. have been shown in venues across Canada In 2019 she formed Level Foundation, a and the US including the Museum of platform for public art in Brooklyn, with a Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto’s Nuit large-scale work by Eleanor King. Blanche, The Peekskill Project, the Spring/Break Art Show and Franklin Street Works, Nanaimo Art Gallery, Division Gallery, Dunlop Art Gallery, and the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art.
Owning Earth | Opening 2021 at Unison Arts 68 Mountain Rest Rd, New Paltz, NY 12561 | unisonarts.org/owning-earth ART FOR NON-HUMANS
JOEL OLZAK https://www.joelolzak.com/
Proposal Title: Drainage, Erosion, Deposition
A nonlinear irrigation ditch winds through the forest, at once a scar and a necessary ecological intervention to prevent erosion in the wake of the disappearance of native trees.
Joel Olzak is a sculptor, book, and performance artist who explores the history of human civilization, how humanity integrates with its environment, and where we are going. He tends towards natural materials, emphasizing the history of craft involved in art and living.
He has shown in group shows at Unison Arts Center, The Teaching Gallery at HVCC, The “Best of SUNY” show 2018 and 2019, and at Art Omi, in Ghent, NY, as well as displaying work in a pop-up exhibition in London.
Owning Earth | Opening 2021 at Unison Arts 68 Mountain Rest Rd, New Paltz, NY 12561 | unisonarts.org/owning-earth ART FOR NON-HUMANS MICHAEL ASBILL // DEREK STROUP
https://michaelasbill.com/
http://www.derekstroup.com/
Derek Stroup is an artist and writer based Proposal Title: Sacred Hearts: An Interspecies in New York. He is the author of six Assembly artist’s books: Tourmaline (2014) Utilities (2013), Every Instance Removed (2008), A series of nesting site sculptures for the local Candy (2006), Rope Swing Manifesto population of indigenous songbirds. (2004), and Field Guide (2002). His artist books are distributed through Printed Matter, Inc. in New York, the Florence Loewy Gallery in Paris and Artphilein in Lugano. Recent publications include photographs in Kalle Lasn’s “Meme Wars: The Creative Destruction of Neoclassical Economics”, “Various Small Books (Referencing the Work Of Ed Ruscha)” by the MIT press (Cambridge), “CrEATe” and “Tangible,” both by Gestalten Press (Berlin) and “Pack!” by Monsa Editions (Barcelona). He has participated in solo and group exhibitions including the Brandhorst Museum—Munich, The Museum of Contemporary Art-San Diego, The Contemporary Museum-Honolulu, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Kohler Art Center.
Michael Asbill weaves arts advocacy, community engagement, environmentalism, and curatorial endeavor into his installation and public art practice. His work has been experienced in venues such as Sporobole and Galerie Zybaldone (Sherbrooke, QC), Flux Factory (Long Island City, NY), The Oregon City Elevator, and the Poughkeepsie Train Station. As a core collaborator with Habitat for Artists, Michael contributed to eco and social engagement projects for Smack Mellon (Brooklyn, NY), Arts Brookfield (New York, NY), Washington DC’s Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Michael is the founder and director ofOwning CHRCH Earth Project | Opening 2021 at Unison Arts Space (Rosendale, NY), a residency for the development of pioneering, community-based,68 participatory Mountain Rest Rd, artworks. New Paltz, Michael NY 12561 is | unisonarts.org/owninga -earth visiting lecturer, and currently head of the sculpture program, at the State University of New York in New Paltz.
ART FOR NON-HUMANS
SARAH MAX BECK https://www.sarahmaxbeck.com
Proposal Title: Untitled
A phallus made of fungi is offers a humorous rebuke of masculinist land art.
Sarah Max Beck’s body of work builds on symbiotic, closed-loop human nutrient systems; redefining waste as resource; and comments, often wryly and self-consciously, on the parallels of current elective human influence on the planet and a parasitic infection of a host.
A background in agriculture became tangled up with a sculpture degree until a creative practice with compost, resource recovery, fermentation, permaculture, and post-consumer plastics all amalgamated into bioart. Beck is co-founder of studioHydrostatic, a collaborative bioart lab in NYC.
Owning Earth | Opening 2021 at Unison Arts 68 Mountain Rest Rd, New Paltz, NY 12561 | unisonarts.org/owning-earth
IM/POSSIBLE FUTURES
Christy Gast is an artist whose work across media stems from extensive research and site visits to places she thinks of as “contested landscapes.” She is interested in places where there is evidence of conflict in human desires, which she traces, translates or mirrors through her art practice.
Her work has been exhibited at MoMA/P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Performa, Artist’s Space, Harris Lieberman Gallery and Regina Rex in New York; the Pérez Art Museum of Miami, Bass Museum of Art, de la Cruz Collection, Locust Projects, and Nina Johnson in Miami; as well as Mass MoCA, the American CHRISTY GAST University Museum, L.A.C.E., High Desert Test Sites, Centro Cultural Matucana 100 https://christygast.com/ (Chile), the Kadist Foundation (Paris) and Milani Gallery (Brisbane). She has received Proposal Title: Treesitting grants and awards from the Art Matters Foundation, Funding Arts Network, South Expanding on a series of sculptures that Florida Cultural Consortium, Tigertail, the propose interactions between human American Austrian Foundation Hayward bodies and trees with textiles as the Prize, and the Joan Sovern Sculpture intermediary, behind this project is a desire Award from Columbia University. to imagine and queer interspecies intimacy.
Owning Earth | Opening 2021 at Unison Arts 68 Mountain Rest Rd, New Paltz, NY 12561 | unisonarts.org/owning-earth IM/POSSIBLE FUTURES
ERIN ANTONAK https://www.erinantonak.com/
Proposal Title: We told ya so
A plains tipi modified for time travel, turned upside down with its tip plunged into the ground. An Indigenous Time Machine for the artist’s time traveling drag queen alter ego, it has crash landed into our present from an Indigenous future.
Erin Lee Antonak is a sculptor, a milliner, and a Wolf Clan member of the Oneida Indian Nation of New York. She is a graduate of Bard College and studied at Lacoste School of the Arts, France and at Vermont Studio Center. She is currently the artist-in-residence at The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, New Paltz, NY and serves as a Yale University Morse College Fellow. Erin has worked in various museums and art galleries developing, designing, and building exhibitions for 20 years. She has also organized and curated shows in Europe, Asia, and North America. Her artwork fuses traditional Iroquois sensibilities and craft techniques with contemporary materials and concepts. Erin is also Assistant Curator of Owning Earth.
Owning Earth | Opening 2021 at Unison Arts 68 Mountain Rest Rd, New Paltz, NY 12561 | unisonarts.org/owning-earth IM/POSSIBLE FUTURES
SARIAH PARK http://sariahnyc.com/
Proposal Title: Untitled (Weaving with Waste)
Three large-scale hand-woven fiber pieces naturally dyed from agricultural food waste show how textile materials can be sourced Sariah Park is an interdisciplinary artist whose ethically and dyed naturally to produce work work explores the mediums of fiber, print and soft that is both aesthetically compelling and also sculpture. Her most recent body of work features has zero negative impact on the environment. the up-cycling of dead stock and damaged printed textiles into new forms and printing with waste to create large-scale works on paper. Sariah’s work aims to challenge the status quo of making and asks important questions regarding societal waste. Her work is included in many private collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Sariah is a professor at Parsons School of Design in New York City.
Owning Earth | Opening 2021 at Unison Arts 68 Mountain Rest Rd, New Paltz, NY 12561 | unisonarts.org/owning-earth IM/POSSIBLE FUTURES
Emilie Houssart explores symptoms of human disconnection from the environment through multidisciplinary projects. Recent shows include installations at Norwich Millennium Library (UK) and Frans Masereel Centrum (Belgium), and the pop-up show EARTHBOUND (NYC) which she co-curated. Raised in a Dutch family in the UK, she has lived in the Hudson Valley since 2013.
EMILIE HOUSSART https://www.emiliehoussart.com/
Proposal Title: Untitled (Cube Mounds)
Out in the woods, protrusions rise from the forest floor. This project confronts the notion of sanctuary in ‘unspoiled’ nature with incongruously shaped mounds of living earth that meet us at body level.
Owning Earth | Opening 2021 at Unison Arts 68 Mountain Rest Rd, New Paltz, NY 12561 | unisonarts.org/owning-earth
CONTACT
Tal Beery Alex Baer Curator, Owning Earth Executive Director, Unison Arts [email protected] [email protected]
917.710.8246 845.255.1559
Owning Earth | Opening 2021 at Unison Arts 68 Mountain Rest Rd, New Paltz, NY 12561 | unisonarts.org/owning-earth