H₂O

Members: Luca Hoffmann, Marie Herrington, Chris Finckel, Isaac Griffin-Layne, and B.K.Zervigón

I am the Arkikosa

Since 2019, Faz's work has explored Dallas's history and, most recently, pulled inspiration from reclaiming their experience of the land through the Arkikosa River (the original indigenous name of the Trinity River in Dallas, Texas). The Arkikosa River is a 710-mile river, the longest with a watershed entirely within Texas.

Faz seeks to embody and give Arkikosa a narrative voice from Dallas to Houston. Their work is focused on the intersection of ecology and history. Their work interrogates ideas of identity, possession, and animacy.

In 2021, Faz was selected by Dr. Lauren Cross, New Stories, New Futures; Faz created a series of digital drawings to "activate" the river's spirit. Faz recorded audio while kayaking and connected with the Arkikosa river to create a first-person narrative. This research became "I am the Arkikosa" and "Water has a memory/Remembering" projection on a 45 ft x 20ft two-sided keystone. This project engaged over 5,000 people.

Cannupa Hanska Luger is a multidisciplinary artist and an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara and Lakota). Through monumental installations and social collaboration, Luger activates speculative fiction and communicates stories about 21st Century Indigeneity, combining critical cultural analysis with dedication and respect for the diverse materials, environments, and communities he engages. He lectures and produces large-scale projects around the globe and his works are in many public collections.

Luger is a 2022 Guggenheim fellow, recipient of the 2021 United States Artists Fellowship Award for Craft and was named a Grist 50 Fixer for 2021, a list which includes emerging leaders in climate, sustainability, and equity who are creating change across the nation. He is a 2020 Creative Capital Fellow, a 2020 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow, the recipient the 2020 A Blade Of Grass Artist Fellowship for Socially Engaged Art and the recipient of the Center For Crafts inaugural Craft Research Fund Artist Fellowship for 2020. He is the recipient of a 2019 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grants, a 2019 Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Honoree and the recipient of the Museum of Arts and Design’s 2018 inaugural Burke Prize. Luger has exhibited internationally including venues such as the Gardiner Museum, Kunsthal KAdE, Washington Project for the Arts, Art Mûr, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, among others. Luger holds a BFA in studio arts from the Institute of American Indian Arts.

Recent, notable works by Luger include Sweet Land (2020), a multi-perspectival and site-specific opera produced through The Industry and staged at the State Historical Park in downtown Los Angeles, for which he was co-director and costume designer; The MMIWQT Bead Project (2018), a social collaboration resulting in the monumental sculptural installation Every One, composed of over 4000 individual handmade clay beads created by hundreds of communities across the U.S. and Canada to re-humanize the data of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, queer and trans community members; and The Mirror Shield Project (2016), a social engagement work which invited the public to create mirrored shields for water protectors at Standing Rock and which has since been formatted and used in various resistance movements across the nation.

Namita Gupta Wiggers, Director of Critical and Historical Craft Studies at Warren Wilson College and Director and Co-Founder of the Critical Craft Forum states within her Burke Prize Juror statement that “Luger simultaneously addresses cultural loss and cultural sustenance, memory and interpretation, concrete form and craft as action. In a world wrought with conflict, he illuminates the strength and unity that come through craft’s capacity to engage communities, empower participation, and flourish in contexts within and outside of the museum setting.” Della Warrior, Director of The Museum of Indian Arts & Culture has stated that “Cannupa Hanska Luger is doing important and vital work, which combines cultural analysis with dedication and respect for human beings, diverse materials, environments and communities with which he engages.” and The Native Arts and Cultures Foundation notes "Luger could well rise to be one of those artists whose caliber is unmatched and whose work will be studied by students to come, thus furthering the path for many more contemporary Native artists."

KX2 is a collaboration combining the strengths of artists and sisters Ruth Avra and Dana Kleinman who create mathematically inspired sculpture merging metal and painting. From a distance the work is bold and geometric, yet up close the viewer is engaged by textural hand-sanded metal and multi-layered paintings. By exploring geometry, symmetry and connection, their work aims to create a moment of pause, inviting the viewer to escape the stresses of the day and find a space to achieve balance. In their most recent work, themes related to environmental issues are presented with the hope to raise an awareness of the fragility of our natural ecosystems.

Since establishing their artistic collaboration in 2007, KX2’s work has been featured in notable galleries and museums around the world. Importantly, the work was leveraged to the international art scene with an invitation to represent the United States at the 2008 Beijing Biennale at the National Art Museum of China. Their work can be found in numerous private, corporate and public art collections throughout North America. Avra and Kleinman currently reside with their individual families in Southern Florida.

​

KX2 is environmentally conscious of material choices, using up to 50% recycled metals and recycled canvas.

Sibylle Szaggars Redford is a German born multimedia environmental artist whose artwork has been exhibited throughout Europe, Monaco, Peru, Singapore, Japan, Suriname and the United States.

Szaggars Redford is the 2016 recipient of the US State Department’s Art in Embassies Program for the US Embassy in Paramaribo, Suriname where after visiting the countries Rain Forests and Indigenous Peoples, 10 of her site specific Pieces were placed on permanent display in the US Embassy in Paramaribo, Suriname.

Her artistry spans across mediums and decades, from painted oil sketches and photographs of her Moroccan travels, expressions on canvas from her American Indian Pueblo visits, large Oil paintings where she explores “The Shape of Color“ and her recent works of watercolor abstracts shaped by the monsoon rains of Santa Fe, New Mexico, California and abroad.

Having worked as an environmental artist for almost 4 decades, her desire is to create art that transcends words, languages, cultures and politics. Szaggars Redford creates art in order to speak to a deeper universal consciousness that’s connected to and dependent on the earth and its environments.

In order to find a stronger voice through art for the Earth, Szaggars Redford entered the world of performance art as an homage to the universal elements and an artistic medium for environmentalism in action.

In 2013 Szaggars Redford in collaboration with Icelandic Composer and Musician David Thor Jonsson, designed a concept for a staged art performance piece “The Way of the Rain” which would incorporate different art forms; music, dance, film, light, spoken word and her first designed stage backdrop of multiple large “Rain Painting Silks” that would symbolize falling water from the heavens.

Since then Szaggars Redford has collaborated with various world renowned composers, choreographers and performers with presentations nationwide, The United Emirates of Abu Dhabi, the Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall, the Opening Night of the 68th United Nations - NGO - International Conference, the 15th Anniversary of the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation and on October 22, 2022, US Premiere of "The Way of the Rain - Hope for Earth"presented by EarthXFilm and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra at the Meyerson Symphony Center, in Dallas, Texas.

In 2015 Szaggars Redford founded The Way of the Rain, Inc. a Non for Profit Organization with the specific purpose of developing, producing and performing educational and artistic performances - themed and designed to promote public awareness to support the protection of our Earth.

In addition to presenting “The Way of the Rain” performances and developing new staged versions of “The Way of the Rain” Szaggars Redford continues to create and exhibit new art.

Beginning of March 2020 during the time of the Covid - 19 lockdown and isolation, Szaggars Redford in collaboration with Composer Tim Janis and environmental activist Robert Redford began creating “The Way of the Rain - Reflections on Earth” video series shorts - a Gift of Hope to the World and an invitation to reflect on the beauty and wonders of our Planet Earth.

“The Way of the Rain - Reflections on Earth” Ocean video series shorts have been screened around the world at the “Virtual“ Earth X Conference - April 22-27, 2020, the United Nations Oceans Day “Virtual” Earth X Oceans and National Geographic Conference - June 9-10, 2020, Earth X Australia / Oceana Conference - June 11, 2020 and the United Nations “Peace Boat” Conference on June 12, 2020.

“The Way of the Rain – Reflections on Earth” video series shorts continue to focus on the World’s Natural Environments; their delicate Ecosystems and Biodiversity which are important and necessary to maintain in order to preserve the existence of all life on Earth.

For more information: www.sibylleszaggarsredford.com

Monique Verdin is a citizen and former councilwoman of south Louisiana’s United Houma Nation and is a part of the Another Gulf Is Possible Collaborative core leadership circle of brown (indigenous, latinx and desi) women. She has intimately documented the complex interconnectedness of environment, economics, culture, climate and change in southeast Louisiana, for decades. Her indigenous Houma relatives and their lifeways at the ends of the bayous, in the heart of America’s Mississippi River Delta, has been the primary focus of her storytelling practice. She is the subject/co-writer/co-producer of the documentary My Louisiana Love. Her interdisciplinary work has been included in an assortment of environmentally inspired projects, including Cry You One as well as the publication Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas. Monique is also the director of The Land Memory Bank & Seed Exchange.

ARTIST STATEMENT

As a multidisciplinary visual artist, Maria Lino integrates works-on-paper, video, collaborative performance, text and textiles in her art practice. Her processes take different paths, but regardless, she begins with research, focusing on the rhythmic repetition of the sounds and images of the environment, or of the individual and collective portraits of social issues of those often overlooked: women, migrants/ immigrants, and persons with disabilities.

Travel has always been an important factor in Maria’s artistic pursuits, dating back to her childhood. As a Cuban immigrant from working class, her family would split the year working in the U.S. and in Cuba. Everyone worked with their hands, her father as a leather cutter and upholsterer, and her mother and aunt as dressmakers and tailors. The women met on Saturdays for sewing circles and to tell stories of their day-to-day, including their migration. Maria watched, listened, and learned.

This experience led to her interest in expressing the movement of people which results in displacement, migration, a search for a new home and a new way of making a living. Using different media and techniques, Maria is interested in expressing stories of journeys. She engages in art that often reminds the viewer of his/her/their own journeys.

BIO

Maria Lino was born in Havana, Cuba. She lives and works in Miami, Florida. She received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Florida International University (2008), and a Bachelor of Science in Studio Art from New York University (1974). Maria is a multidisciplinary visual artist who employs drawing, printmaking, text, video, dance and textiles to create individual and group portraits of those who are often overlooked, women, children, people with disabilities, migrants and immigrants. Selected solo exhibitions include “Migrating Clotheslines” (2020), at the Rosemary Duffy Larson Gallery of Broward College, Davie, Florida, “Caminatas” (2019), at Art@Work/Farside Gallery in Miami, Florida, and “I’m an IMMIGRANT/So Are You” (2018), at the Instituto Cervantes in New York, New York. Selected group exhibitions include the “Mother Tongue Film Festival 2022, of the Smithsonian Institution, “Behind Every Beautiful Thing: Encountering Bodies, Wrestling the Human Condition” (2021), at the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans, Louisiana, and “Latinisiimo Biennial 2021” (2021), at the City Lights Gallery, in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Her work is included in “Centerpoint Now” (2020), a publication of the World Council of Peoples for the United Nations (WCPUN). Maria is a Fulbright U.S. Scholar and a twice-recipient of the Oscar B. Cintas Fellowship.

Please visit Maria’s website: www.marialino.com

Marcella (Ojibwe) is an interdisciplinary artist and scholar. She creates video art and soundscapes using poetic imagery and abstract narratives. Her award-winning pieces are screened and exhibited in museums, fine art galleries and film festivals globally.

Marcella uses a collision of electronic media, archival materials, found footage, sound design and photography to engage with relationships between memory and land. Her abstract filmmaking employs soundscapes, rhythm, multi-media installations, large-scale projections and experimental aesthetics to address critical issues of gender, sexuality and history.

As an artist and scholar, she examines how Native art makes critical interventions that are aesthetically and intellectually arranged with the intention of displacing master narratives. She received a PhD in American Studies at the University of New Mexico in 2020 documenting how film and photography – historically used by non-Native people as a tool of colonialism – are being reclaimed by the visual and sonic scholarship of contemporary Native artists. Marcella is a graduate of the University of Washington’s Native Voices MA program and obtained her BA in Ethnic Studies with a minor in film studies from Mills College.

Members: Luca Hoffmann, Marie Herrington, Chris Finckel, Isaac Griffin-Layne, and B.K.Zervigón

I am the Arkikosa

Since 2019, Faz's work has explored Dallas's history and, most recently, pulled inspiration from reclaiming their experience of the land through the Arkikosa River (the original indigenous name of the Trinity River in Dallas, Texas). The Arkikosa River is a 710-mile river, the longest with a watershed entirely within Texas.

Faz seeks to embody and give Arkikosa a narrative voice from Dallas to Houston. Their work is focused on the intersection of ecology and history. Their work interrogates ideas of identity, possession, and animacy.

In 2021, Faz was selected by Dr. Lauren Cross, New Stories, New Futures; Faz created a series of digital drawings to "activate" the river's spirit. Faz recorded audio while kayaking and connected with the Arkikosa river to create a first-person narrative. This research became "I am the Arkikosa" and "Water has a memory/Remembering" projection on a 45 ft x 20ft two-sided keystone. This project engaged over 5,000 people.

Cannupa Hanska Luger is a multidisciplinary artist and an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara and Lakota). Through monumental installations and social collaboration, Luger activates speculative fiction and communicates stories about 21st Century Indigeneity, combining critical cultural analysis with dedication and respect for the diverse materials, environments, and communities he engages. He lectures and produces large-scale projects around the globe and his works are in many public collections.

Luger is a 2022 Guggenheim fellow, recipient of the 2021 United States Artists Fellowship Award for Craft and was named a Grist 50 Fixer for 2021, a list which includes emerging leaders in climate, sustainability, and equity who are creating change across the nation. He is a 2020 Creative Capital Fellow, a 2020 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow, the recipient the 2020 A Blade Of Grass Artist Fellowship for Socially Engaged Art and the recipient of the Center For Crafts inaugural Craft Research Fund Artist Fellowship for 2020. He is the recipient of a 2019 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grants, a 2019 Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Honoree and the recipient of the Museum of Arts and Design’s 2018 inaugural Burke Prize. Luger has exhibited internationally including venues such as the Gardiner Museum, Kunsthal KAdE, Washington Project for the Arts, Art Mûr, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, among others. Luger holds a BFA in studio arts from the Institute of American Indian Arts.

Recent, notable works by Luger include Sweet Land (2020), a multi-perspectival and site-specific opera produced through The Industry and staged at the State Historical Park in downtown Los Angeles, for which he was co-director and costume designer; The MMIWQT Bead Project (2018), a social collaboration resulting in the monumental sculptural installation Every One, composed of over 4000 individual handmade clay beads created by hundreds of communities across the U.S. and Canada to re-humanize the data of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, queer and trans community members; and The Mirror Shield Project (2016), a social engagement work which invited the public to create mirrored shields for water protectors at Standing Rock and which has since been formatted and used in various resistance movements across the nation.

Namita Gupta Wiggers, Director of Critical and Historical Craft Studies at Warren Wilson College and Director and Co-Founder of the Critical Craft Forum states within her Burke Prize Juror statement that “Luger simultaneously addresses cultural loss and cultural sustenance, memory and interpretation, concrete form and craft as action. In a world wrought with conflict, he illuminates the strength and unity that come through craft’s capacity to engage communities, empower participation, and flourish in contexts within and outside of the museum setting.” Della Warrior, Director of The Museum of Indian Arts & Culture has stated that “Cannupa Hanska Luger is doing important and vital work, which combines cultural analysis with dedication and respect for human beings, diverse materials, environments and communities with which he engages.” and The Native Arts and Cultures Foundation notes "Luger could well rise to be one of those artists whose caliber is unmatched and whose work will be studied by students to come, thus furthering the path for many more contemporary Native artists."

KX2 is a collaboration combining the strengths of artists and sisters Ruth Avra and Dana Kleinman who create mathematically inspired sculpture merging metal and painting. From a distance the work is bold and geometric, yet up close the viewer is engaged by textural hand-sanded metal and multi-layered paintings. By exploring geometry, symmetry and connection, their work aims to create a moment of pause, inviting the viewer to escape the stresses of the day and find a space to achieve balance. In their most recent work, themes related to environmental issues are presented with the hope to raise an awareness of the fragility of our natural ecosystems.

Since establishing their artistic collaboration in 2007, KX2’s work has been featured in notable galleries and museums around the world. Importantly, the work was leveraged to the international art scene with an invitation to represent the United States at the 2008 Beijing Biennale at the National Art Museum of China. Their work can be found in numerous private, corporate and public art collections throughout North America. Avra and Kleinman currently reside with their individual families in Southern Florida.

​

KX2 is environmentally conscious of material choices, using up to 50% recycled metals and recycled canvas.

Sibylle Szaggars Redford is a German born multimedia environmental artist whose artwork has been exhibited throughout Europe, Monaco, Peru, Singapore, Japan, Suriname and the United States.

Szaggars Redford is the 2016 recipient of the US State Department’s Art in Embassies Program for the US Embassy in Paramaribo, Suriname where after visiting the countries Rain Forests and Indigenous Peoples, 10 of her site specific Pieces were placed on permanent display in the US Embassy in Paramaribo, Suriname.

Her artistry spans across mediums and decades, from painted oil sketches and photographs of her Moroccan travels, expressions on canvas from her American Indian Pueblo visits, large Oil paintings where she explores “The Shape of Color“ and her recent works of watercolor abstracts shaped by the monsoon rains of Santa Fe, New Mexico, California and abroad.

Having worked as an environmental artist for almost 4 decades, her desire is to create art that transcends words, languages, cultures and politics. Szaggars Redford creates art in order to speak to a deeper universal consciousness that’s connected to and dependent on the earth and its environments.

In order to find a stronger voice through art for the Earth, Szaggars Redford entered the world of performance art as an homage to the universal elements and an artistic medium for environmentalism in action.

In 2013 Szaggars Redford in collaboration with Icelandic Composer and Musician David Thor Jonsson, designed a concept for a staged art performance piece “The Way of the Rain” which would incorporate different art forms; music, dance, film, light, spoken word and her first designed stage backdrop of multiple large “Rain Painting Silks” that would symbolize falling water from the heavens.

Since then Szaggars Redford has collaborated with various world renowned composers, choreographers and performers with presentations nationwide, The United Emirates of Abu Dhabi, the Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall, the Opening Night of the 68th United Nations - NGO - International Conference, the 15th Anniversary of the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation and on October 22, 2022, US Premiere of "The Way of the Rain - Hope for Earth"presented by EarthXFilm and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra at the Meyerson Symphony Center, in Dallas, Texas.

In 2015 Szaggars Redford founded The Way of the Rain, Inc. a Non for Profit Organization with the specific purpose of developing, producing and performing educational and artistic performances - themed and designed to promote public awareness to support the protection of our Earth.

In addition to presenting “The Way of the Rain” performances and developing new staged versions of “The Way of the Rain” Szaggars Redford continues to create and exhibit new art.

Beginning of March 2020 during the time of the Covid - 19 lockdown and isolation, Szaggars Redford in collaboration with Composer Tim Janis and environmental activist Robert Redford began creating “The Way of the Rain - Reflections on Earth” video series shorts - a Gift of Hope to the World and an invitation to reflect on the beauty and wonders of our Planet Earth.

“The Way of the Rain - Reflections on Earth” Ocean video series shorts have been screened around the world at the “Virtual“ Earth X Conference - April 22-27, 2020, the United Nations Oceans Day “Virtual” Earth X Oceans and National Geographic Conference - June 9-10, 2020, Earth X Australia / Oceana Conference - June 11, 2020 and the United Nations “Peace Boat” Conference on June 12, 2020.

“The Way of the Rain – Reflections on Earth” video series shorts continue to focus on the World’s Natural Environments; their delicate Ecosystems and Biodiversity which are important and necessary to maintain in order to preserve the existence of all life on Earth.

For more information: www.sibylleszaggarsredford.com

Monique Verdin is a citizen and former councilwoman of south Louisiana’s United Houma Nation and is a part of the Another Gulf Is Possible Collaborative core leadership circle of brown (indigenous, latinx and desi) women. She has intimately documented the complex interconnectedness of environment, economics, culture, climate and change in southeast Louisiana, for decades. Her indigenous Houma relatives and their lifeways at the ends of the bayous, in the heart of America’s Mississippi River Delta, has been the primary focus of her storytelling practice. She is the subject/co-writer/co-producer of the documentary My Louisiana Love. Her interdisciplinary work has been included in an assortment of environmentally inspired projects, including Cry You One as well as the publication Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas. Monique is also the director of The Land Memory Bank & Seed Exchange.

ARTIST STATEMENT

As a multidisciplinary visual artist, Maria Lino integrates works-on-paper, video, collaborative performance, text and textiles in her art practice. Her processes take different paths, but regardless, she begins with research, focusing on the rhythmic repetition of the sounds and images of the environment, or of the individual and collective portraits of social issues of those often overlooked: women, migrants/ immigrants, and persons with disabilities.

Travel has always been an important factor in Maria’s artistic pursuits, dating back to her childhood. As a Cuban immigrant from working class, her family would split the year working in the U.S. and in Cuba. Everyone worked with their hands, her father as a leather cutter and upholsterer, and her mother and aunt as dressmakers and tailors. The women met on Saturdays for sewing circles and to tell stories of their day-to-day, including their migration. Maria watched, listened, and learned.

This experience led to her interest in expressing the movement of people which results in displacement, migration, a search for a new home and a new way of making a living. Using different media and techniques, Maria is interested in expressing stories of journeys. She engages in art that often reminds the viewer of his/her/their own journeys.

BIO

Maria Lino was born in Havana, Cuba. She lives and works in Miami, Florida. She received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Florida International University (2008), and a Bachelor of Science in Studio Art from New York University (1974). Maria is a multidisciplinary visual artist who employs drawing, printmaking, text, video, dance and textiles to create individual and group portraits of those who are often overlooked, women, children, people with disabilities, migrants and immigrants. Selected solo exhibitions include “Migrating Clotheslines” (2020), at the Rosemary Duffy Larson Gallery of Broward College, Davie, Florida, “Caminatas” (2019), at Art@Work/Farside Gallery in Miami, Florida, and “I’m an IMMIGRANT/So Are You” (2018), at the Instituto Cervantes in New York, New York. Selected group exhibitions include the “Mother Tongue Film Festival 2022, of the Smithsonian Institution, “Behind Every Beautiful Thing: Encountering Bodies, Wrestling the Human Condition” (2021), at the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans, Louisiana, and “Latinisiimo Biennial 2021” (2021), at the City Lights Gallery, in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Her work is included in “Centerpoint Now” (2020), a publication of the World Council of Peoples for the United Nations (WCPUN). Maria is a Fulbright U.S. Scholar and a twice-recipient of the Oscar B. Cintas Fellowship.

Please visit Maria’s website: www.marialino.com

Marcella (Ojibwe) is an interdisciplinary artist and scholar. She creates video art and soundscapes using poetic imagery and abstract narratives. Her award-winning pieces are screened and exhibited in museums, fine art galleries and film festivals globally.

Marcella uses a collision of electronic media, archival materials, found footage, sound design and photography to engage with relationships between memory and land. Her abstract filmmaking employs soundscapes, rhythm, multi-media installations, large-scale projections and experimental aesthetics to address critical issues of gender, sexuality and history.

As an artist and scholar, she examines how Native art makes critical interventions that are aesthetically and intellectually arranged with the intention of displacing master narratives. She received a PhD in American Studies at the University of New Mexico in 2020 documenting how film and photography – historically used by non-Native people as a tool of colonialism – are being reclaimed by the visual and sonic scholarship of contemporary Native artists. Marcella is a graduate of the University of Washington’s Native Voices MA program and obtained her BA in Ethnic Studies with a minor in film studies from Mills College.