The works of Youngs and Rinaldo are meant to mold the viewer’s aesthetic reactions in a way that anchors their role in the Great Chain of Being as one part of a massive web of links and connections; as we humans are allowed to take up space and oxygen on Earth, so, too, are creatures like springtails and fallen leaves on the concrete ground allowed to exist. …read full review

– Anika Sultana

“Belonging to Soil” is opening at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland this Friday, January 30! This is my collaborative virtual reality art installation – with Shadrick Addy, JT Thrash, Mayen McClain, Luke Stephens, Josh Rodenberg, Will Yuan, Andrew Sanchez, and Megan Wright, and live springtails!

This group show brings together artists across Ohio who focus on sustainability, agriculture, food justice, and natural ecologies. Through diverse materials and perspectives, these artists reflect on humanity’s relationship with the environment. Some incorporate found elements like waterway pollutants, plant-based dyes, and grass clippings, while others investigate topics ranging from climate change conspiracies to natural history and arthropods. Many draw directly from personal experiences as farmers, grocery workers, or environmental observers. Spanning painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, installation, and community-based practice, the works in this exhibition highlight the urgency of environmental issues while inviting dialogue and response.

Curated by Theresa Bembnister, DJ Hellerman, Megan Lykins Reich, and Christina Vassallo. Co-organized by the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH and Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, Cleveland, OH.

It really is a great exhibition, with artworks by: Catherine Clements, Avery Mags Duff, Myles Dunigan, Tina Gutierrez, Brian Harnetty, Desert Kitchen Collective: Glenna Jennings, Jalisa Robinson & Friends, Keith Lemley, Celeste Malvar-Stewart, Lori Nix & Kathleen Gerber, Elena Osterwalder, Praxis Fiber Workshop, John Sabraw, Charmaine Spencer, and Supermrin.

This show brings together artists across Ohio who focus on sustainability, agriculture, food justice, and natural ecologies. Through diverse materials and perspectives, these artists reflect on humanity’s relationship with the environment. Some incorporate found elements like waterway pollutants, plant-based dyes, and grass clippings, while others investigate topics ranging from climate change conspiracies to natural history and arthropods. Many draw directly from personal experiences as farmers, grocery workers, or environmental observers. Spanning painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, installation, and community-based practice, the works in this exhibition highlight the urgency of environmental issues while inviting dialogue and response.

Curated by Theresa Bembnister, DJ Hellerman, Megan Lykins Reich, and Christina Vassallo. Co-organized by the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH and Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, Cleveland, OH.

The other artists in this exhibition: Catherine Clements (Bowling Green), Avery Mags Duff (Akron), Myles Dunigan (Oberlin), Tina Gutierrez (Cincinnati), Brian Harnetty (Columbus), Desert Kitchen Collective: Glenna Jennings, Jalisa Robinson & Friends (Dayton), Keith Lemley (Ravenna), Celeste Malvar-Stewart (Columbus), Lori Nix & Kathleen Gerber (Cleveland), Elena Osterwalder (Columbus), Praxis Fiber Workshop (Cleveland), John Sabraw (Athens), Charmaine Spencer (Cleveland), and Supermrin (Cincinnati).

Go check it out! https://www.contemporaryartscenter.org/experience/exhibitions/2025/05/ohio-now-state-of-nature

Credits:

Fungal Entanglement artists: Anna Arbogast, Madison Blue, Alex Buchan, Xiuer Gu, Elias Marquez, Jiara Sha, Doo-sung Yoo, and Amy Youngs.

In a Hotter House exhibition curated by Doo-sung Yoo and Amy Youngs

Artists: Skylar Albright, Anna Arbogast, Marcia Armstrong, Madison Blue, Alex Buchan, Madalyn Bunjevac, Al Dilorenzo, John Cairns, Ben Chang, Megan Fabro, Andie Goodes, Taylor Green, Xiuer Gu, Brennan Jones, Olga Kisseleva and Lilia Chak, Eric Homan, Bethany Marple, Elias Marquez, Andrew Mehall, Caroline Mosholder, Zoe November, Ivan David Ng, Takahiro Okubo, Dev Patel, Noor Quadri, Bakhahang Rai, Mural Remix, Jonathan Riles, Ken Rinaldo, CG Ryan, Bella Saraceni, Lily Schumacher, Sabrina Sedlacko, Jiara Sha, Avery Stratman, Kaika Wakabayashi, Thomas Winningham, Andrew Wood, Uriah Wright, Doosung Yoo, Amy Youngs, Barry Yuan, and Danny Zhang.

Video: Jordan Sommerlad

Photography: Dev Patel and Amy Youngs

Music: “Aurora”, by Anemoia. creative commons license cc by-nc-sa

Project support: The Ohio State University’s Humanities Institute, the Living Art and Ecology Lab of the Department of Art, the Biological Sciences Greenhouse, and the Department of Molecular Genetics.

Special thanks to the Costume Shop in the Department of Theatre, Film, Media Arts at the Ohio State University for sharing their fabric scraps with us!

We also took the Fungal Entanglement performance to New York City in 2024 for the Art in Odd Places festival.

Photos by Wong Pak Hang.

The exhibition team installed the work beautifully; including the virtual reality experience zone next to the live springtail terrariums with magnifiers and a video microscope viewing area. The exhibition is at Hong Kong City Hall, November 4 – November 12, 2023. I will also present a talk titled, Eco Intelligence, in the festival’s conference, Humans, Animals, Plants, Machines and Artificial Intelligence, on Nov 9, 2023.

Belonging to Soil is a collaborative virtual reality artwork created with Shadrick Addy, Mayen McClain, Luke Stephens, JT Thrash, Andrew Sanchez, Josh Rodenberg, Megan Wright, and William Yuan.

Insect as Idea Panel Discussion

Join us for a panel discussion hosted on Zoom in partnership with the Zoological Collections, Department of Biology, Western University, on Thursday May 12 at 5:30 p.m. EST.

In conversation with exhibition curators Dr. Helen Gregory and Dr. Nina Zitani, participating artists Catherine Chalmers, Andrea Cooper, Aganetha Dyck, Jude Griebel, and Amy Youngs will discuss how their practices have been influenced by environmental issues and multispecies ecologies.

Register here

The exhibition Insect as Idea runs from April 28 to June 18 at McIntosh Gallery, Western University. For more information, visit https://mcintoshgallery.ca/.

“Augmented and virtual reality have become commonplace. The Augmented Senses: Feminist Queer Augmented/Virtual Reality virtual symposium highlights experimental and creative approaches to enhanced immersive experiences. Focusing on gender, trans, and feminist themes around the body, desire, biological art, and our microbial environment, three contemporary artists will present their work: micha cárdenas, Eva Davidova, and Amy M. Youngs.”

– More on the Feminist Queer Augmented and Virtual Realities symposium site.

This was programming put on by the CURTIS R. PRIEM EXPERIMENTAL MEDIA AND PERFORMING ARTS CENTER at Rensselaer

The public can visit the gallery at 1740 Broadway St. Tuesday through Friday from 11AM to 5PM, and Saturdays from 1PM to 5PM. August 6 – September 14, 2021. Or listen to our interview together.

In Tiahue Tocha (let’s go home) Colectivo Rasquache continues its project of engaging with transborder reality through material and social invention, this time with particular attention to brickmaking as a homage and timeline of Coapan. As construction methods in Mexico have evolved, brick-making, which, along with farming, was the primary occupation of many from Coapan who have since migrated to the US, gave way to cement block. Cement blocks are not made from local materials unlike red bricks or adobe bricks. For our installation at Visible Records, the red clay of Virginia provides fresh material for old ways of making as we ask:

• What new things are built when we are apart?  
• What opportunities arise out of absence or restriction? 
• What possibilities might make themselves known that otherwise would never have been?
• How do we share them?
• What happens when nostalgia gives way to futurity?

The workshop I did with Ken Rinaldo was called “Unmaking with Worms”. Participants built mini sculptures and placed them into a baby bassinet where composting worms live. Our building materials were food and paper waste; egg cartons and discarded vegetables sourced from the compost pile of a nearby community garden. During the workshop, we explored how worm ecosystems “unmake” waste matter and “remake” it into fertile compost.

During the run of the exhibition, a time-lapse camera is capturing the transformation of the sculptures. Looking forward to seeing the worms work!

I got to spend most of June as an artist in residence at the Folly Tree Arboretum in East Hampton, NY. This wonderful place has trees with stories which are curated, grafted, collected, and cared for by artist Tucker Marder.

During the residency I made Soil Joy (Alegría de la Tierra). The roots of exuberant plants (sometimes called weeds) reveal their past travels through soil. Roots engage the underground world of minerals, water, and air and they collaborate with the organisms that make up the life of the soil. Roots are records of the resilient, multispecies networks that plants participate in. These are brought into our human world and highlighted with color as a way to celebrate plant intelligence and the value of all plant species, even those maligned as weeds.

Soil was my focus and roots became a way to see its interaction with plants. I explored several methods for extracting roots, including digging with claw gloves. I sourced larger roots from giant piles of dead tree that were to become mulch. Pulling the stems of plants gently after a good rain was best for getting the small roots up intact. The green parts were fed to the chickens and the roots washed and dried before coating them with milk paint. Using this biodegradable paint means the artwork can be composted, and can and re-enter the cycle of becoming soil again.

The Tree Folly Arboretum was an incredibly inspirational place for me to generate work and new ideas for collaborations with humans and non-humans. On site there were several giant, outdoor worm bins and piles, black soldier flies, bee hives, chickens, ducks, turkeys, and pigs. Local waste from coffee shops and breweries were feedstock for worms and black soldier flies, which were feedstock for chickens and gardens. I was in heaven.

I dug into the soil, examined it under the microscope, listened to the worm pile with a piezo microphone, I witnessed a large tree moving, and giant piles of compost being made and turned.

I’m making plans to return in Spring to create a “Soil Arena” on site. This will be a space for celebrating soil, the living ecosystem that supports our life and so many others.

This is a model for “Soil Arena”, which we plan to build in an area where there is now a dirt road. Let’s appreciate soil with our careful observation, admiration, dances, and games so we remember to care for it – and remember to treat it like our lives depend on it.

If you are in East Hampton, New York, in the summer, you can make an appointment to schedule a tour of the fantastic Folly Tree Arboretum. The Arboretum was founded in 2013 by Tucker Marder, who currently directs Arboretum programming with co-programmer Isla Hansen.