Resonant Earth explores the connections between the human body and the land through the practices of six contemporary artists: Kelly Akashi, Lisa Alvarado, Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio, Andrea Chung, Sky Hopinka, and Anna Mayer. The artists’ distinct approaches speak to the intertwined social and material histories of specific ecologies, both on a personal and collective level, while invoking biological memories and somatically inherited knowledge. In turn, the exhibition offers a timely exploration of the bodily connections we have with nature underscoring the vital interdependencies between people and the planet.

The featured artworks span a variety of media, including sculpture, painting, ceramics, collage, photography, video, and sound. From suspended rubber casts of nonnative trees in Los Angeles, to bronze sculptures of weeds at former Japanese-American internment camps in Arizona, to abstract paintings alluding to generations of migrant farmers along the US-Mexico border, the artworks in Resonant Earth demonstrate a critical engagement with entangled histories of the land, primarily in the Western and Southern United States. Collectively, the exhibition addresses the local environment while at the same time considering the forced migration and displacement of people and plants across geographies.

Notably, the selected artists draw on Indigenous and diasporic forms of knowledge, culture, and materials to envision embodied modes of transformation and regeneration in relation to ongoing struggles for environmental and social justice. The practices presented in this exhibition echo our own fraught engagement with the environment, resisting humanity’s perceived separation from the natural world. The artworks illustrate existing and new relationships between the body and the earth, building awareness towards other humans and life forms as part of an integrated whole in the face of intergenerational trauma, continued exploitation of the earth’s resources, and climate change.

Resonant Earth is curated by Molly Everett, Assistant Curator, Moody Center for the Arts. The exhibition is made possible by the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance, the Brad and Leslie Bucher Artist Endowment, the Tamara de Kuffner Fund, the Kilgore Endowment Fund, and the Sewall Endowment. Special thanks to Rice University students Nicole Yip for her contributions to the exhibition design and Joshua Chiang for the graphic design.