Rising: Climate in Crisis
Rising Residencies invite artists to examine the severity of the climate crisis and be agents of change to guide our collective understanding, response, and vision as we shape our shared future. 2020 - present
Rising: Climate in Crisis Residencies at A Studio in the Woods invite artists to face the severity of the climate crisis and be agents of change to guide our collective understanding, response, and vision as we shape our shared future.
Artists play a vital role in facing the climate crisis. We encourage artists to guide our collective response to this challenging issue while bringing wisdom, integrity, optimism, and even humor to intentional projects seeking transformation for our species and our planet. Southeast Louisiana’s land and inhabitants are continually challenged by the effects of environmental degradation. As sea levels and temperatures rise, our landscape acts as a microcosm of the global environment. We look for ways to reimagine our interactions with our shifting urban and natural ecosystems. Rising Residencies provide artists with time, space, funding, and staff support to foster critical thinking in the creation of new works – igniting our imaginations while illuminating our challenges and inspiring solutions.
Rising: Climate in Crisis Residents
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Kate Cheka Artist, writer and comedian, 2024, Wiltshire UK Kate Cheka (UK) is an artist, writer and comedian whose primary creative medium is human emotion, either trying to make people laugh (comedy), think (philosophical musings) or feel (storytelling). She has traveled extensively, studied in four different countries and performed… -
Ashley Teamer Visual Artist, 2024, Connecticut Ashley Teamer’s collages explore the relationships between the body, nature, space, and time. She uses painting, sculpture, photography, and sound to creatively intervene with indoor and outdoor architecture revealing the malleability of our built environment. Through layering images, Teamer charts… -
Omar Mendoza Linares Visual Artist, 2024, Mexico Omar Mendoza Linares’ (Tlahuac, MX) art is rooted in a poetic vision of color and life. Through his pictorial work, he seeks to recover a renegade visual language and a knowledge of ancient Mexican pictorial techniques as an act of… -
Zeelie Brown Multidisciplinary Artist, 2023, New York and Alabama Zeelie Brown’s first art museum was the pine woods in Alabama. They make Black&queer wilderness refuges called “soulscapes” to (re)imagine what nature might be. Zeelie works with the MIT Department of Architecture, NOMAS, and Group Project to create sustainable human waste solutions in… -
Simi Kang Interdisciplinary Artist, 2022-23, Canada Simi Kang is a mixed Sikh American community advocate, educator, artist, and scholar. Their work centers Asian American collaborative resistance as a site for imagining environmentally and economically just futures in Southeast Louisiana. In collaboration with a Vietnamese and Cambodian… -
Rachel Lin Weaver Interdisciplinary Artist, 2023, Virginia Rachel Lin Weaver is an artist whose work spans video, installation, sculpture, and performance. Weaver’s creative interests relate directly to an upbringing in rural Alaska and West Virginia, and their projects explore intersectional identity, queer/trans embodiment, memory, and interdependence. They… -
Nailah Jefferson & Laurie Sumiye Filmmaker & Conceptual Artist, 2022-23, Louisiana & Hawaii With nature as their guide, a New Orleans-born filmmaker and Hawaii-born artist from two different tourist-driven, coastal economies grappling with climate-caused sea rise explore the historical effects invasive species have on fragile native ecosystems and relate it to the growing… -
Quintron & Miss Pussycat Performing Artists, 2023, Louisiana Quintron and Miss Pussycat created a live puppet show about extreme weather events, which utilized a “Wildlife Organ” built and installed by Quintron at A Studio in the Woods. The Wildlife Organ is envisioned as a musical instrument that uses… -
Niki Franco Multidisciplinary Artist, 2023, Florida Niki Franco is a Caribbean abolitionist community organizer, writer, and facilitator of spaces for collective study. Seeking to disrupt the institutionalized bureaucratic frameworks of academia and transactional ways in which relationships exist under capitalism, her work experiments with truth-telling, radical… -
Ian Gerson Interdisciplinary Artist, 2023, Texas Ian Gerson is a queer and trans interdisciplinary artist and educator born and based in Houston, TX. Ian has shared work across art spaces in the US and in Mexico City, including Socrates Sculpture Park, the Bronx Museum of Art,… -
Laura Tanner Multidisciplinary Artist, 2023, Florida Laura Tanner’s creative works act as sites of inquiry into the revisionist histories that reinforce systems of inequity. Spanning drawing, installation and social practice, she works with historical institutions and local communities to collect documented and oral histories that shed… -
paris cyan cian Interdisciplinary Artist, 2023, Louisiana paris cyan cian is a New Orleans Black girl playing and composing with devotion, through an embodied ceremonial practice in nature and beyond. As a movement architect, educator, and curator working with and through various interdisciplinary forms of dance, drawing, film,… -
Claire Alexandre Visual Artist, 2022, North Carolina Claire Alexandre is an intersectional artist and storyteller who weaves autobiographical reflections with ancestral knowledge while exploring larger themes of environmental, gender and racial justice. She seeks to deepen our collective understanding of Black community prosperity and its close ties… -
Andrina Turenne Performing Artist, 2022, Canada Andrina Turenne used her residency to explore Indigenous and local perspectives on water, language and land through music. In addition to doing research, exploring geographic and cultural throughlines, and speaking with people on the land, she produced recordings and performances… -
Virginia Hanusik Visual Artist, 2022, Louisiana While in residence, Virginia Hanusik worked on The Place We Keep, a series exploring the inequality of disaster relief and preservation in communities along the Gulf Coast experiencing the impacts of climate change through a compilation of photographs, oral histories,… -
Hye Sea Visual Artist, 2022, Maryland Hye Sea is an artist, alchemist, and a steward of the earth. Hye Sea’s residency project focused on documenting the stories of those who are devoted to being stewards of the land and earth. She created a solar-engraved collection of… -
Sidiki Conde Performing Artist, 2021 and 2023, New York Sidiki Conde used his residency to immerse himself in the culture, nature and music of the region and compose a series of songs about climate change. Sidiki collaborated with Dr. Michael White for a performance and panel on music of… -
Lisa E. Harris Interdisciplinary Artist, 2021-22, Texas Lisa E. Harris’ residency supported the regional development of an international research project, ONSHORE TRILLING: What to Do When the Earth Sings the Bruise, by affording opportunities for mutual creative exchange between Harris and the Women of Cancer Alley and… -
LaChaun Moore Visual Artist, 2021, South Carolina LaChaun Moore created an agriculturally-based installation titled Heirloom utilizing heirloom plants as a catalyst to talk about the historical context of the natural environment and how that differs from ancestral and familial ties. LaChaun Moore is an interdisciplinary artist who… -
Lydia Y. Nichols Literary Artist, 2020-21, Louisiana Lydia Y. Nichols worked on a speculative dark comedy stage play titled Don’t Look Away, set at the turn of the 22nd century in a post-reparations Gulf South, following a climate event that results in the disappearance of New Orleans.… -
J.M. Nimocks Anti-Disciplinary Artist, 2021, Illinois J.M. Nimocks (SWAMP XADDiii) is the descendant of survivors of the transatlantic slave trade and Choctaw Native Americans who settled in Meridian and Sunflower, Mississippi before migrating to the midwest. They are an anti-disciplinary artist and scholar who is most… -
MILAGROS Visual Artists, 2021, Louisiana During their residency, MILAGROS focused on the development of their “Crud Buddies” project. Crud Buddies are cute, adoptable pets made from ocean-bound foam fished out of the Mississippi River and given new life through artistic intervention. Their residency helped facilitate… -
Yudith Azareth Nieto Multidiscipliary Artist and Organizer, 2021-22, Lousiana Yudith Azareth Nieto is a two spirited (queer) Mexican-American environmental justice organizer, language justice worker, and multidisciplinary artist based in the Gulf South. She is a cofounder of BanchaLenguas Language Justice Collective in Bvlbancha (New Orleans,LA) and part of the…