Katie Holten speaking at New Orleans Museum of Art
Friday, January 20 at 7pm

For more information, please visit www.noma.org

Katie Holten (Dublin, 1975) is a visual artist motivated by cultural, political, and social circumstances. In 2003 she represented Ireland at the 50th Venice Biennale. She will be artist in residence at A Studio in the Woods from January 5 – February 16, 2012. During her residency she will investigate, through the specific condition of New Orleans and the Mississippi River Delta, mankind’s relationship with the natural world “in the Anthropocene.” The Anthropocene defines Earth’s most recent geologic time period as being human-influenced, or anthropogenic, based on overwhelming global evidence that atmospheric, geologic, hydrologic, biospheric and other earth system processes are now altered by humans. Building upon the critically acclaimed public artwork prototype she created in Tree Museum (New York, 2009), Holten plans to research the historical, current, and projected ecosystem of New Orleans and the Mississippi river delta, through site visits and engagement with local communities and express these scientific and ecological investigations through drawings and sculpture. She is in discussion with the New Orleans Museum of Art to establish the framework for a site-specific work to be created for the museum in 2012-2013. http://www.katieholten.com

[Photo above right] Excavated Tree (Flowering Dogwood), 2007, duct tape, cardboard, PVC, steel and wire.
Excavated Tree was constructed from waste material collected at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (CAMSTL). It represents a life-size replica of a flowering dogwood, a tree native to Missouri. Installation view of solo exhibition at the CAMSTL. Photo: Mike Schuh, courtesy CAMSTL.

Ebb & Flow Residencies are sponsored in part thanks to generous support of the National Endowment for the Arts, The RosaMary Foundation and The Surdna Foundation. This program is supported by a grant from the Louisiana Division of the Arts, Office of Cultural Development, Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism, in cooperation with the Louisiana State Arts Council. The grant is administered through the Arts Council of New Orleans.