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Lay of the Land
Curated by Naomi Alessandra, Julianna Heller, and Eleanor Scholz
Exhibition Dates: June 11 – July 26, 2025
“Artistic practice…can benefit immeasurably from unfocusing; to train oneself to observe what appears out of sight so as to cultivate an understanding of the structural complexity and agency of our environment.”
—Jussi Parikka, “Cartographies of Environmental Arts”
Canonical Western landscape art has historically been used as a political tool to define the “truth” of a place, a narrative to assert ownership and dominion. Yet environments in all their intricacies cannot neatly slot into a framework; they are as nuanced as the many human and non-human beings that engage with them. The lay of the land—the unique arrangement or characteristics of a place—contains a multitude of truths.
Lay of the Land is an exhibition of 14 Bay Area-based artists that underscores the complexity of making work about the environment. Employing methods akin to Parikka’s idea of unfocused observing, each artist is attuned to the unseen: those aspects of landscape that are amorphous, absent, and/or fleeting. Within the show, macro and micro perspective shifts reveal both the expansive and singular in landscape. Works re-engage nature and place through personal histories; artists are visibly reinserted into the landscape to acknowledge their subjecthood and belonging. Discarded materials are embraced, transforming our understanding of agency and value in shared environments.
Together, the artists of Lay of the Land meet the world as they find it, facing complicated environmental themes with haptic curiosity, ingenuity, and (at times) playfulness. Exhibiting painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, video, textiles, installation, collage, and assemblage, Lay of the Land offers deeply personal and idiosyncratic ways of experiencing the many environments that exist in this place at this time.