Catherine Chalmers holds a B.S. in Engineering from Stanford University and an M.F.A. in Painting from the Royal College of Art in London. She has exhibited her artwork around the world, including MoMA P.S.1; MASSMoCA; The Drawing Center, New York, Kunsthalle Vienna; Today Art Museum, Beijing; among others. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications, including the New York Times, The New Yorker, Washington Post, ArtNews and Artforum. She has been featured on PBS, CNN, NPR, and the BBC. Two books have been published on her work: FOOD CHAIN (Aperture 2000) and AMERICAN COCKROACH (Aperture 2004). Her video “Safari” received a Jury Award (Best Experimental Short) at SXSW Film Festival in 2008. In 2010 Chalmers received a Guggenheim Fellowship and in 2015 she was awarded a Rauschenberg Residency. In 2018 she created the course “Art & Environmental Engagement” and taught it at Stanford University. Her video “Leafcutters” won Best Environmental Short at the 2018 Natourale Film Festival in Wiesbaden, Germany; in 2019 it won the Gil Omenn Art & Science Award at the Ann Arbor Film Festival. She lives in New York City.
EMAIL: catherine@catherinechalmers.com
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ARTIST STATEMENT:
I refer to myself as an artist – but perhaps it’s more accurate to say I’m part of an art collective. I never work alone. My colleagues just don’t happen to be human.
Early in my practice, I raised my collaborators in the studio – fed and housed them. But with the Leafcutters project, I moved into the field where the exchange was between me and millions of wild ants in their natural habitat. With my current work, Conifer Trees, Bark Beetles & Fire, I focus not on an individual species, but on an ecosystem.
My work is at the intersection of art, science and nature. I do extensive research for each of my long-term, multimedia projects and a direct engagement with the natural world is central to my process. I aim to give form to the richness, as well as the brutality and indifference that often characterize our relationship with nature.
I use the narrative possibilities of the visual arts to help bridge the increasing divide between humanity and the environment and to creatively engage with the systems that support life on Earth. I believe our culture is far richer with the consideration and inclusion of other life forms.
Though I’ve worked across media – from engineering and painting to photography, video, sculpture, and drawing – my artistic practice has centered on one central issue: how to confront and challenge an anthropocentric point of view. Humanity has long drawn lines in the sand to define what belongs and what does not. Perhaps now, in the dawn of the Anthropocene, is a good time to reconsider those lines – and what lives on the other side.