September 2025 e-Newsletter for subscribers and non-members is here

The Ecological Power of Contemporary Art:

An Interview with Aviva Rahmani on Art and Ecology, an American artist who combines feminism, activism, and environmental renewal in a single practice of social commitment

originally published May 31, 2025 via Art Tribune online, interview by Antonino La Vela

Aviva Rahmani (New York, 1945) is an artist who combines creativity with a commitment to environmental and cultural renewal. At the heart of her work is the Aviva Rahmani Eco-Art Project, which includes works such as Blued Trees, Ghost Nets, Cities and Oceans of If, and Gulf to Gulf. These projects denounce humankind's destructive impact on the environment and ecocide, inviting audiences to reevaluate their connection to an environment that is fundamental to our cultural identity.

Who is Aviva Rahmani With a solid background in art and environmental studies, Rahmani has developed theories that challenge traditional conventions. Her work combines conceptualism with cultural criticism, intertwining historical narratives and literary legacies, connecting the past to today's social changes, making them symbols of resilience and renewal. We discussed her practice in this interview.

Interview with Aviva Rahmani

Let's start from the beginning. What role can your cultural and landscape experiences, your sensitivity to nature, and your exploration of performance and conceptual art play in environmental renewal?

My earliest memories, linked to nature and an insatiable curiosity for the world, drew me to performance and conceptual art. As a young artist, I wanted to express both my creative impulses and growing environmental concerns. These experiences laid the foundation for my work, which I call Trigger Point Theory as Aesthetic Activism. Confronting phenomena such as deforestation, pollution, and ecocide has driven me to create art that aims to spark real transformations in the relationship between humanity and the environment.

The projects Blued Trees, Ghost Nets, Cities and Oceans of If, and Gulf to Gulf have become fundamental in this field. What message do you intend to convey?

Each of my works stems from the belief that a small gesture can make a difference to the environment. Blued Trees and Ghost Nets highlight the serious consequences of ecosystem collapse, while Cities and Oceans of If and Gulf to Gulf imagine a future where urban spaces and natural environments coexist in harmony. Together, these works invite us to recognize our responsibility to the planet, reminding us that every creative gesture can contribute to healing the planet's wounds.

You have collaborated with prominent figures such as Judy Chicago, enriching your work with a feminist perspective.

Working with Judy Chicago revolutionized my concept of performative collaboration, deepening the connection between feminism and ecological activism. This experience challenged and transcended patriarchal and colonial narratives. The work Ablutions, created together with Judy, Suzanne Lacy and Sandi Orgel in 1973 on the theme of sexual violence, further strengthened my commitment to combating the colonization of the territory and social injustice, themes that have accompanied me since the early days of the feminist movement.

Your art combines science, indigenous wisdom, and cultural criticism in an original way. How do they come together in your creative process?

I consider the world a complex and interconnected system. I draw on physics, environmental studies, and indigenous traditions to construct a holistic vision that guides my work. This approach allows me to create rigorous and emotionally resonant works, highlighting the connections between ecological health, cultural identity, and the devastating consequences of ecocide. This vision opens spaces for thought and concrete action.

Despite international recognition, your work in Italy remains little-known. You presented Trigger Points / Tipping Points at the 2007 Venice Biennale, but much remains to be discovered. Italy's high artistic culture offers the ideal context for a dialogue on the environment.

I see the opportunity to engage the public more, not only by exhibiting my works, but also by stimulating profound reflection on sustainability and ecological justice. This commitment is essential at a time when global challenges, such as ecocide, require innovative and restorative solutions.

In your most recent project, Tolstoy & I, you reimagine classic literature through blue pencil self-portraits, drawn on torn pages from an old edition of War and Peace that belonged to your mother.

Tolstoy & I is an introspective journey into my personal history and my relationship with contemporary politics. Reusing pages from my mother's beloved copy of War and Peace, I grapple with the violation of history —that is, the way political forces fragment collective memory. The use of blue pencil, a reference to my project Blued Trees, creates a symbolic link between my ecological activism and literary reflection, inviting us to rediscover hidden narratives and understand how memory, legacy, and political reality are inextricably linked.

Looking to the future, what message would you like to convey to emerging artists and environmental activists today?

Embrace your creativity as a tool for transformation. Art can speak truth to power, challenge the status quo, and imagine alternative futures. I invite young artists to dare, transcend disciplinary boundaries, and use their voices to address the urgent issues of our time. Our planet needs innovation, passion, and decisive action: every creative gesture is a step toward a more sustainable and just world.

Antonino La Vela

Original article in Italian here

ecoartspace recently did a 1.5 hour interview with Aviva Rahmani in her studio in Vinalhaven, Maine (July 2025), as part of our video archive, which is available to researchers up request. 

August 2025 e-Newsletter for subscribers is here

Sustain(ability) & the Art Studio online Course, Fall 2025
October 18, 2025 - December 20, 2025

DEADLINE September 1, 2024

This will be our seventh course designed exclusively for ecoartspace members that will prepare artists to develop ways of thinking about sustainability in their practice, both conceptually and physically. Participants will learn how to wildcraft art materials, a practice that requires one to deepen their relationship with land, creativity, and self. We will also think critically about how one’s community and ecosystem are vital allies in a time of socio-ecological destabilization.

The first half of the course includes lectures, guest artist talks, resource offerings, and group discussion, as we explore the implications of a bioregional perspective and investigate the function of art today. In the second half of the course, each student will work on their own project, informed by course content (this may include a project already in progress). They will receive feedback from Anna and the class before a final presentation, open to the public.

All classes will be held on Saturdays from 2-4pm ET. The first three sessions will take place over three consecutive weeks, beginning on October 18. The final two classes will take place over two months, giving student time to execute a creative project of their own inspired by course content.

Speakers

Koyoltzintli is an interdisciplinary artist and educator living in Ultser County, New York. She was raised on the Pacific coast and in the Andean mountains of Ecuador. Her work revolves around sound, ancestral technologies, ritual, and storytelling, blending collaborative processes with personal narratives. @koyoltzintli

Nicole Dextras is committed to making art that is completely compostable as an active alternative to plastic and fossil fuels. Her previous material developments include: Willow bark leather, Yucca fibre and fruit peels. The objective of her research is to produce garments that demonstrate and encourage ethical and sustainable futures for the garment industry. @nicoledextras

This online ecoartspace course is taught by Anna Chapman @owl_and_apple

For more information and to sign up, email: info@ecoartspace.org

Call for Artists

NOVEL BODIES
Scientific Art Posters for Society of Environmental Toxicity and Chemistry (SETAC), 46th Meeting, Portland, Oregon 

Conference dates: 16–20 November 2025

Novel Bodies is organized as a parallel visual compendium to traditional scientific posters at the 46th Annual North America SETAC meeting. This year’s conference theme is The Essence of Science: Curiosity, Discovery and Solutions. Scientific abstracts and posters will be organized according to the session tracks (below). This exhibition will be curated by Minal T. Mistry, scientist, artist, and conference committee member from Oregon Department of Environmental Quality and Patricia Watts, founder and curator of ecoartspace.

Twenty visually captivating posters will be selected. Art posters will be displayed alongside those for accepted scientific abstracts. Artists are encouraged to submit a short abstract (250 words) describing their submission to aid the viewer. Viewers will be encouraged to share impressions from the dual poster format in a journal and will be shared with selected artists. In person conference dates: 16–20 November 2025.

• Submission Deadline: 15 October 2025

• Submission Form: https://forms.gle/XAGmoM45Sv11wKxg8 

Background

Society of Environmental Toxicity and Chemistry (SETAC) is the professional organization with the mission to advance environmental science and management. SETAC is dedicated to advancing environmental science and science-informed decision-making through collaboration, communication, education and leadership. It fulfills that purpose through events, publications, awards and education programs. The annual North America meeting draws a couple thousand attendees (may be affected this year due to federal changes).

Guidelines

• Posters should address a topic suitable to SETAC. See below in Session Tracks for focus areas.  

• Posters should stand on their own, telling the research/topical story without a verbal narrative. Artists may submit an optional abstract (250 word max.) as a companion to the poster.

• Poster size: 18 x 24 inches or 24 x 36 inches

• Layout: Horizontal or vertical in either final print size 

• Text should be readable from a minimum five feet away.

• Format: Submit printable PDF of artwork formatted for either of two sizes

• No AI generated submissions please.

For clarification please contact Minal Mistry  (materials.deq at gmail.com)

Conference Session Tracks

1. Environmental Toxicology and Stress Response: Explores environmental toxicology and response to stress (biological, physical and chemical) in various systems. Encompasses in silico and in vitro tools and methods involving adverse outcome pathway (AOP), mode of action, molecular toxicology, -omics, animal alternative testing, quantitative structural activity relationship (QSARs), high-throughput techniques and emerging approaches for statistical toxicology.

2. Aquatic Toxicology, Ecology and Stress Response: Explores ecology, ecotoxicology and response to stress of all aquatic systems, including lentic and lotic freshwater systems, estuaries, coastal and marine environments. 

3. Wildlife Toxicology, Ecology and Stress Response: Covers all life forms of wildlife not strictly aquatic (amphibian, reptiles, birds, mammals and other organisms) living in areas from the deserts to the tropics and everything in between.

4. Chemistry and Exposure Assessment: Comprises all aspects of chemical analysis, monitoring, fate and modeling, green chemistry and alternative chemical assessment.

5. Environmental Risk Assessment: Bridges both aquatic and terrestrial environments, and all potential stressors (physical, chemical, biological and biotechnological) with human and ecological endpoints towards the goal of integrated holistic assessment such as “One Health.” 

6. Engineering, Remediation and Restoration: Addresses remediation and restoration of stressor-impacted air, water, and soil and sediment, including tools for predicting, monitoring and evaluation; technologies and methods for remediation and restoration; environmental engineering; green remediation; damage assessment; and strategies for management.

7. Policy, Management and Communication: Includes all aspects of science application in policy or regulations and management (regulatory science), as well as science communication to stakeholders in diverse audiences.

8. Systems Approaches: Uses cross- and trans-disciplinary approaches seeking to address complexity and large-scale issues by applying and integrating concepts such as life cycle assessment, sustainability, ecosystem services, impact assessment and environmental economics. Topics include regional and watershed-scale environmental management, climate change, resiliency and other related areas

Conference information

KATRINA BELLO | "Lupain (Posoge 1)," 2023 Charcoal and pastel on paper, 53 1/2 x 48 in (135.9 x 121.9 cm).

Terra Madre: Katrina Bello

Carina Evangelista on the work of Katrina Bello. May 30, 2025

Charcoal—in use for human visual expression since 26,000 BCE—is Philippine-born artist Katrina Bello’s preferred medium fortranscribing her response to landscapes she immerses herself in. Exploring the terrain inart residencies in different parts of the U.S. is Bello’s way of finding elemental connections to her adopted country. The haptic—the sense of touch—is ever-present in her process and production. From the earth, dirt, or rocks that she collects or crushes to the charcoal and pastel that she smudges onto paper to create the skeins of lines and the shades of crevices in the tree bark or stone striations that she draws, her hand serves as the medium through which she meditates on what it means to embrace what feels like terra incognita.  

Read full essay here

July 2025 e-Newsletter for subscribers is here

The Sound of Time

Review of TINKUY, SEVEN ACTS FOR THE BEGINNING, END, AND BEGINNING OF TIME

By Irene Lyla Lee

TINKUY, SEVEN ACTS FOR THE BEGINNING, END, AND BEGINNING OF TIME is a performance and exhibit, at Soon Is Now until July 6th, located at The River Center at Long Dock Park in Beacon. A workshop on creating sound objects takes place on June 28th. Register here

Koyoltzintli’s artwork is an aesthetic language informed by the pre-Columbian indigenous traces from Ecuador, the place of her upbringing. Though thoroughly studied, from the Andes to the Amazon, the Ecuadorian coast is largely ignored. Due to this lack of research, objects from long ago remain there. Much of the mountains and forests are threadbare, yet the shores remember a culture whose nearly forgotten stories were colonized. Koyoltzintli delves into the mostly clay objects utilized by the local Chorrera culture (1300–300 BCE). “Rocks hold the ancient memory of the earth,” Koyoltzintli observes. 

Tinkuy is Quechua/Kichwa, meaning “two meetings to produce a third.” After one of her elders passed away, Koyoltzintli visited the “Americas” section of a nearly empty Metropolitan Museum during the pandemic. There she found silence and objects frozen behind glass. Koyoltzintli has made over 100 pieces, some exact replicas of pre-Columbian flutes and some her interpretations based on the geometry of ancient designs specific to what is now Ecuador. 

Rocks hold Tinkuy like a vessel. The performance plays on a loop in the exhibit and broadly illustrates seven ages: The Time of Ether, The Time of Fire, The Time of Water, The Time of Wind/Birds, The Time of Voices, and The Time of the Anthropocene. The sonic performance is assisted by recorded birds, glaciers, and the sound objects exhibited. Performers include Koyoltzintli, Bel Falleiros, Cristina Mejía, Daniel Blake, Ricardo Gallo, dance performed by Mar Parrilla, and Mohawk singer Theresa Bear Fox.  

The Chorrera culture was one of the most sonically sophisticated societies of the ancient world. Many of the objects come from a deep legacy of ritual, healing, and connection. Western science even coincides with the geometry of the objects, like a universal language. Some sound objects use water; some are bowls, flutes, or whistles. Many are shaped like birds or humans. Some have feet. Flecked with mica, a finely layered rock where early bacteria developed, they have a cosmic appearance. One is a dodecahedron, which scientists consider the possible shape of our universe. These sound objects are rounded bodies for wind and water that create a negative, making space for the person or element engaging it. 

At the north end of the exhibit is a beaded, door-like shape of an intuitive vision brought to the artist after collaborating with another musician. A visual manifestation of the third created by an encounter. A democratic value is placed on every measure of time, whether ancient or immediate.

These objects were never made to produce beauty. Sometimes the breath breaks the note, or water pushes air through their tubes to release a lonely call. In The Time of Wind/Birds, the performers use small flutes, feathers, and a boa-like sound object that is Koyoltzintli’s design, inspired by an ancient flute. Koyoltzintli describes how quickly some animals took flight in a world of winds after they emerged from the water. There can be a difficulty in the uncertainty of rhythm or tone, like wind under unsteady wings, a discord that brings awareness. 

 Koyoltzintli says she’s used to sound objects on the floor of her studio, but the wooden displays, which are no more than a foot off the ground, produce the intimacy of a bow, a humble acknowledgment of earth. Aware of negative space throughout the exhibit, Koyoltzintli traces the glyph of a mountain made by the displays, which faces the Hudson River, visible beyond a field, the same direction as the Ecuadorian coast: a continent consolidated into one orientation. Koyoltzintli says the West is a point to reflect and face discomfort. The show implicates us, inviting us to consider our role in environmental disruption, as the performance ends with everyone–performers, and audience–cracking rocks together. These rocks are now suspended against the wall: a visible tension. Sound marks time, and these objects–so specific to the time and place when they were created–also fold time when they are played. Though the performance is over, the echo remains. We continue the music in our lives.

Humans are a small piece of this cacophony. Pieces of black and white Japanese paper lining the exhibit tables honor the mockingbird who serenaded the performers during practice. Looking for new sounds to try, with hope, the mockingbird will practice the music too, replicating the surrounding world.

A microscope view (200x magnification) of a worm in the soils on the farm, ‘Willydah’. Image: Kim V. Goldsmith

the secret sounds of soil, Kim V. Goldsmith

…soils not only speak to us, but can be great subjects for art and music…soils truly are sexy. – Dr David Eldridge

I’ve been purposely listening to the sound of soils for the past three years. It’s been a process of digging into the layers, questioning everything, reading extensively, and creating an attentive listening discipline that demands time, stillness, and an open mind.

Compared to the clear, resonant melody of solo birdsong or a choral dawn chorus, the scritchy scratches, crunchy crackles, gurgles and soft thumps of life beneath our feet are a test to the human ability to tune into life that more often goes unseen, unheard, and unnoticed. It can at first sound like white noise.

In its simplest form, soil is made up of mineral particles, organic matter, water, air and living organisms that slowly and continuously interact with each other. Weathered rock reduced to tiny particles that are moved and manipulated by plants, bacteria, fungi, invertebrates, animals and humans through cycles of growth, decay, and at times, disruption—generating enormous amounts of energy in the process. Sound is part of this energy mix.

Continue reading here

June 2025 e-Newsletter for subscribers is here