TREE TALK: Artists Speak For Trees

Tree Talk: Artists Speak For Trees

Thursday, May 26

United States: 10:00am PDT, 11:00am MDT, 12:00pm CDT, 1:00pm EDT

Europe: 19:00 CEST Australia: 3:00am AEST, Friday, May 27

Andrea Bersaglieri, Yan Cheng, Margaret LeJeune, Mia Mulvey

The entanglements of a forest are vast, complex and mysterious. Today artists seek to understand and express the interconnectedness of trees with all living beings. Members included in the online exhibition and book Embodied Forest will share their diverse artworks and ideas about our human relationship with trees and forests.

For our May 2022 Tree Talk, Andrea Bersaglieri will speak about her body of work that explores novel ecosystems and investigates the future survival of plant species as environments evolve. Yan Cheng will discuss his installations centered around performativity as a space for transdisciplinary biologies, technologies, evolution and chance happenings which become a metaphor for collective communication and interspecies coexistence. Margaret LeJeune will share her interdisciplinary and intersectional project which draws from environmental history, geography, and maritime navigation techniques in an effort to define our relationship to this rapidly changing landscape. Mia Mulvey will present her work exploring the recording of time, climate change and our relationship to remote landscapes through such forms as ancient trees, ice, and geology.

Tree Talk is moderated by Sant Khalsa, ecofeminist artist and activist, whose work has focused on critical environmental and societal issues including forests and watersheds for four decades.
 
Co-sponsored by Joshua Tree Center for Photographic Arts

Members and one guest are free. General Public can attend for $10. Capacity is 100 participants. All participants MUST REGISTER.

Gif Images: ©Andrea Bersaglieri, Front, 2021; ©Yan Cheng, Laboratorium: Anoplotrupes stercorosus, 2021; ©Margaret LeJeune, Two Trees Marigram, 2022; ©Mia Mulvey, Pando, 2018

Presenters:

Andrea Bersaglieri's body of work explores novel ecosystems and investigates the questions: Which plants will thrive around us as the environment evolves? Which plants will out survive us? Do we have any control or even responsibility to dictate what grows on the plots beneath our feet? Will the plants that we now consider weeds become our new cultivars and crops? How does the dirt beneath us feed into and contain these dichotomies? Andrea Bersaglieri was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay area and came to Southern California to attend California State University, Long Beach where she earned an MFA in Drawing and Painting in 1991. She has lived, worked, and studied in Florence and Rome, Italy and in Philadelphia. Andrea currently teaches Drawing and Painting at Cerritos College and CSU, Long Beach. andreabersaglieri.com

Image: ©Andrea Bersaglieri, Front, 2021, Oil on Canvas, 8 x 12 feet

Yan Cheng's work is situated at the intersection of art and science, with an interest in the relationship between humans and non-humans. He entangles social, natural, and cultural environments, approaching non-human life forms as actants instead of being a backdrop, and disrupting existing binaries which separate nature and culture. His installations centre around performativity as a space for transdisciplinary biologies, technologies, evolution and chance happenings which become a metaphor for collective communication and interspecies coexistence. Cheng has performed at Tate Modern, London, Einbuch.haus, Meinblau Projektraum, and Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin. He is part of Zona Dynamic collective in Berlin. He exhibited at the Asian Art Show at NonBerlin. He was an Artist in Residence at La Wayaka Current, Sound Art Lab, Denmark, Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, Residency Unlimited, The Wassiac Project and NARS Foundation in New York. Curatorial projects include Countdown Grabowsee, Berlin and Lesley Heller Workspace, New York. yangicheng.com

Image: ©Yang Cheng, Laboratorium: Anoplotrupes stercorosus, 2021, Sound installation scarab beetles, forest terrariums, techno-scientific apparatus, 285cm x 185cm

Margaret LeJeune's Thirteen Hours to Fall examines the climate crisis through investigations of contemporary and future littoral zones along the mid-Atlantic coast. These works ask viewers to bear witness to the complex history of a landscape altered by the timber industry, plantation farming practices, and climate change. This interdisciplinary and intersectional project draws from environmental history, geography, and maritime navigation techniques in an effort to define our relationship to this rapidly changing landscape. Margaret LeJeune is an image-maker, curator, and educator from Rochester, New York. Working predominantly with photographic-based mediums, LeJeune explores our precarious relationship to the natural world. LeJeune has been invited to create work at several residency programs which foster collaboration between the arts and sciences including the Global Nomadic Art Project, University of Notre Dame Research Center, Ives Lake Field Station, and Trout Lake Research Station. margaretlejeune.com

Image: ©Margaret LeJeune, Two Trees Marigram, 2022, Digital collage, 20 x24 inches

Mia Mulvey's work explores the recording of time, climate change and our relationship to remote landscapes through such forms as ancient trees, ice and geology. Through field research in locations such as Scandinavia, the Western U.S. and the Arctic Circle, she is interested in information bound in the land through layers and forms. In an effort to honor the "ground truth" of specific locations her process involves utilizing technology to sculpturally record and investigate the environment. Mia Mulvey received her M.F.A from Cranbrook Academy of Art and her B.F.A from Arizona State University. Her work has shown in numerous venues such as the Denver Art Museum, American Museum of Ceramic Art, ASU Ceramic Research Center and Goodwin Fine Art. She has received numerous grant and residencies at Kohler Arts in Industry, Guldagergaard International Ceramic Research Center, The Arctic Circle and the Montello Foundation. miamulveystudio.com

Image: ©Mia Mulvey, Pando, 2018, 3d printed porcelain, 13 x 60 x 22 inches