EARTH WEEK: Meghann Riepenhoff: State Shift

Each 12 months throughout Earth Week I curate a group of photographic tasks from artists who’re working to make the often-invisible nature of the worldwide local weather and the ecological disaster extra seen utilizing conceptual, lens-based artwork strategies. The arts – and the visible arts specifically – have a novel capability to confront audiences with uncomfortable truths, provoke significant dialogue, foster empathy, and encourage people to take motion on at present’s most urgent points.

Today, we’re  Meghann Riepenhoff’s venture, State Shift.

These our bodies of labor are linked by this thematic lens: making the often-invisible nature of the worldwide local weather and the ecological disaster extra seen utilizing conceptual, lens-based artwork strategies.

State Shift

State Shift is a geological time period describing dramatic and sudden modifications to ecosystems — typically when important thresholds are crossed. I skilled one type of this catalyzing phenomenon in early 2024, when an excessive climate occasion prompted intensive harm to my house and prompted a two 12 months subsequent displacement. The works in State Shift have been made throughout this time of displacement, which I used as a possibility to discover nationwide websites extremely compromised by human intervention. The addition of pigments, mushroom ink, and extra supplies act as an allegory for the impression of people on the panorama.

These places embody Miami Beach, FL, thought of a “ground zero” of the local weather disaster, barraged by recurring storms and threatened by rising sea ranges; and the previous city of Moncton, WA, which was utterly submerged in 1915 when an ill-advised dam was constructed to supply Seattle with energy and water. I additionally labored downriver from the Hanford Site, essentially the most poisonous place within the USA. It was the positioning of plutonium manufacturing used within the first atomic bomb, which had devastating impacts on native communities. While the cleanup continues, just some miles down the Columbia River, locals swim within the river and revel in household gatherings at its shores.

I discovered the time of our displacement tough and wealthy, survivable however grueling, and I turned to my artwork as a spot of connection and floor, a basis the place I may regroup and compost the destabilizing processes of loss and restoration. This work considers the reality that nobody is exempt from the impacts of human degradation of the setting.

 

Meghann Riepenhoff (b. 1979 Atlanta, GA) is an artist primarily based on the west coast of the United States. She acquired a BFA in Photography from the University of Georgia, and an MFA from San Francisco Art Institute. Her camera-less cyanotypes are created in collaboration with the panorama and the ocean, on the edges of each. In 2018, Riepenhoff was acknowledged as a Guggenheim Fellow.

Her work has been exhibited internationally at numerous main establishments, with collections together with the National Gallery, the Getty, the High Museum of Art, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She has revealed two monographs, Littoral Drift + Ecotone and Ice. The latter was named a Top 10 Photography Book of 2022 by Smithsonian Magazine.

Instagram: @meghannriepenhoff