Studio Solares

According to the United Nations, humans have been the main cause of climate change since the 1800s. As atmospheric shifts continue to manifest extreme weather conditions, interventions from local to international levels aim to target and halt this ecological crisis. Yet, despite these efforts, individuals aged 16 - 25 across the world have reported levels of climate anxiety that negatively impact their daily lives or outlooks on the future. Organized by emerging curators raised in an environmentally conscious world, Surroundings: Video Encounters of Nature links three contemporary artists creating environmental portraits through moving imagery and film.

Beginning with Donna Conlon’s From the Ashes (De las cenizas), a closeup encounter with a hummingbird reminds viewers of life’s fragility and humans’ impact on the natural world. In Carolina Caycedo’s Esto no es Agua/This Is Not Water, Las Damas waterfall in southern Colombia comes to life in a kaleidoscopic dance, restoring a sense of agency to the body of water. The exhibition concludes with Nadia Huggins’ Circa no future, an interrogation of the notions of displacement and free will through the marine environment. Presented in eight-week-long installations, Surroundings engulfs viewers in textures, movement, and forces witnessed in nature, creating a cinematic experience for all audiences.

JULY 27 – SEPTEMBER 22:
DONNA CONLON

SEPTEMBER 28 – NOVEMBER 24:
CAROLINA CAYCEDO

NOVEMBER 30 – JANUARY 26, 2025:
NADIA HUGGINS

Rose B. Simpson is an artist, a mother, and the daughter of a matrilineal line of ceramicists and potters spanning nearly 70 generations. The exhibition presents a comprehensive survey of the last decade of Rose B. Simpson’s artistic career. The show positions Simpson’s work in the greater context of family and womanhood, exploring the relationships between the artist and her maternal relatives and their influences on her work. A member of the Santa Clara Pueblo (Tewa: Kha-'Po Owingeh) in New Mexico, Simpson combines her ancestral and contemporary knowledge to create mixed media sculptures using clay, organic found items, and mechanical hardware.

Featured alongside Simpson's work will be sculptures by her mother, Roxanne Swentzell, a prolific artist whose expressive figures inspired Simpson; her grandmother, Rina Swentzell, who was a well-known academic, activist, and architect; and her great-grandmother, the artist Rose Naranjo, who was the center of gravity that connected Simpson’s many talented and successful relatives.

This exhibition highlights the work of Lalla Essaydi, a Moroccan photographer who captures large-scale intimate portraits of Arab women. Essaydi adorns her sitters and, at times, their environment with Arabic calligraphy. Essaydi’s work confronts gender inequality issues of the East, as well as, the voyeuristic gaze of the West, often appropriating Orientalist imagery such as “the veil, the odalisque, and the harem.” Boldly feminist at its core, Essaydi’s oeuvre unveils the dynamic experiences, identities, and cultural histories of her sitters. This installation features over 10 years of work from nearly every series in Essaydi’s career: Converging Territories (2003-2004), Les Femmes du Maroc (2005-2007), Harem (2009), and Bullets (2009-2017).