I am an artist, educator and environmental activist from New Orleans. My artwork explores what it means to live in a time of global warming with a collective uncertain future. My practice explores the historical legacies that got us here to help imagine new possibilities for a livable future. My work is specifically rooted in Southern Louisiana, where I live, as a microcosm of our shifting time.
Click here to see my CV, and check out my instagram, @studio.hnnh.chlw.
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To inquire about my work, hire me for an artist talk or workshop, or otherwise get in touch, email me: hnnh.chlw@gmail.com
STATEMENT
My artwork explores what it means to live in an era of global warming and ecological uncertainty, rooted in Southern Louisiana as a microcosm of our shifting world.
I examine how resource extraction and refining are entangled with the ongoing legacies of colonization, enslavement, and capitalism; systems that have exploited both human communities and the ecologies they are embedded within.
I work to divest my practice from fossil fuels through my material choices, studio energy sources, and refusal of fossil fuel funding. By working this way, I offer a slower, more intentional paradigm of engaging with our surroundings as an antidote to the short-sighted culture of consumption that has gotten us to this precarious moment.
I combine unlikely materials in visually lush compositions that draw viewers into layered landscapes bridging past and present with speculative futures; ecosystems that might emerge from our culture’s detritus if we fail to change course.
The work invites viewers to confront their own implication and imagine the individual and collective shifts required for a just transition toward a livable future for all beings.
BIO
I am an artist, educator and environmental activist raised and currently working in New Orleans. I received my BA from Brandeis University in 2009 and my MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2016. I’ve exhibited widely around New Orleans and has shown around the country at Wave Hill, Bronx, NY; Laumeier Sculpture Park, St. Louis, MO; Dieu Donné, New York, NY; Asheville Museum of Art, Asheville, NC; Minnesota Center for the Book Arts, Minneapolis, MN, and other venues. My work has been featured in Frieze, The Art Newspaper, Art Review, The New York Times, American Craft, Hand Papermaking, BOMB, Hyperallergic, Burnaway, and more. My work is held in the collections of the City of New Orleans and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. My work is included in two creative atlases by writer and activist Rebecca Solnit, Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas, co-authored with Rebecca Snedeker and Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas, co-authored with Joshua Jelly-Schapiro. In 2022, I was awarded the South Arts Southern Prize; I was also the South Arts Louisiana State Fellow that year.
