All-Ages Opening Reception on Sunday, March 24, 3-5pm
Mama Needs a Raise! : Towards a Utopian Care Economy
The Old Stone House in Washington Park - 5th Ave btwn 3rd and 4th Streets, Brooklyn, NY
On View: March 24 - May 12, 2024
If you’re around New York City, come check out "Mama Needs a Raise! Toward a Utopian Care Economy" at the Old Stone House. The show unpacks the myriad forms of unpaid “invisible” or “emotional labor” that parents face at all life stages, including their relationship to such factors as race, gender, sexual orientation, immigration status and disability. Other artists propose both real and imagined “Utopian” alternatives, from collective childcare to paid leave to an art world that actually welcomes parents.
Participating Artists include: Allison Belolan, Shweta Bist, Orly Cogan, Christa Donner, Anna Grevenitis, Kim Hopson, Ashley January, Taja Lindley, Caroline McAuliffe, Bakula Nayak, Jocelyn Russell, Sara Shaoul, Victoria Smits, Maggie Wong, Nina Wood, Betty Yu
On Aprin 18th at 7pm EST, Cultural ReProducers will join forces with New York's Mother Creatrix Collective for "Making it What We Need" our generative workshop serving parents in the arts. Unlike past iterations, this one will be ONLINE, which means you can join from anywhere. More information coming soon. Save the date if you'd like to join us.
Exhibitions and an Artist Talk in Western Mass
After a year and a half settling in to a new rhythm in New England, it’s wonderful to find opportunities to share my work here among some excellent creative colleagues and friends. Coming up / on view now:
Thursday, March 7th, 6:15 pm
The ArtSalon
Smith College, Carroll Room (in Campus Center), 100 Elm Street, Northampton, MA
Doors open 6pm, presentations begin 6:30pm. Sliding Scale Entry $5-15
A dynamic social evening of engaging (and fast-paced!) presentations by established and emerging artists in the Pioneer Valley, featuring Christa Donner, Justin Kim, Todd Colby, Magda Bermudez, and Julie Lapping Rivera. Please join us March 7th for an evening of exciting presentations by local artists. More information :https://www.theartsalon.com/ and https://www.instagram.com/theartsalon/
Opening: Friday, March 8th, 5-8pm
Physiotasmagorical
A.P.E. Gallery, 126 Main Street, Northampton, MA
On view from March 7th - 29th, 2024
A group show investigating corporeal secrets at the juncture of the clinical and the imaginary. What effects do our internal phenomena have on our defining characteristics of both body and mind? How does the somatic self reveal our unique human reality? Intentional awareness of sensation, our “gut instinct,” reveals knowledge that is an embodied subject of “self.” The wisdom of the body is vague, invisible and powerful; a cabinet of curiosities. Featuring work by Carolynn Desch, Christa Donner, Michael Medeiros, Bobbi Meier, Deb Mell, Melissa Oresky, and Susan Sensemann. More information: https://www.apearts.org/upcoming1.html
Opening: Thursday, February 22, 5pm
Amherst College Art & the History of Art Faculty and Staff Exhibition
Eli Marsh Gallery, Fayerweather Hall, 17 Fayerweather Drive, Amherst, MA
On View from Feb 19th - April 12, 2024
Work in painting and drawing, printmaking, sculpture, fiber arts, video and sound by the remarkable faculty and staff of Amherst College’s Department of Art and the History of Art, including Joshua Baum, Sonya Clark, Douglas Culhane, Christa Donner, Emily Drummer, Betsey Garand, David Gloman, Brian House, Zibby Jahns, Justin Kimball, Seth Koen, Adam Levine, Lucia Monge, Gabriel Phipps, and Robert Sweeney.
Self-Adjacent in Virginia, NYC, and Ohio
My drawing, “Home/Body,” will travel far from home as part of the exhibition Self-Adjacent, where she’ll be in great company alongside work by the brilliant Mequitta Ahuja, Alberto Aguilar, Qiana Mestrich, Megan Wynne, Sarah Sudhoff, and many others. The show will be on view November 10, 2023 - Jan 7th, 2024 at the Visual Arts Center in Richmond, VA before traveling to Massey Klein Gallery in New York City in Spring, 2024. In October, 2024 you can find her at the Kennedy Museum of Art in Athens, Ohio.
A Portal is Opening at the Lawrence Arts Center, Kansas
If you’re in the vicinity of Lawrence, Kansas, be sure to catch the time-travel portal near a bench in South Park. It’s part of my new project through the Lawrence Arts Center. Be sure to BYO headphones for best results.
“A Portal is Opening” builds from the experience of raising a child in 2022. It’s about the temporal wormholes through which moments from childhood reappear, and how parenthood alters the shape of the future beyond one’s own lifespan. The project uses immersive sound, an interactive map, and two large works on paper to imagine a message sent from a child living seven generations from our “now.” This narrative was inspired by Environmental Activist and Buddhist Scholar Joanna Macy, who leads participants into connection with someone living 200 years in the future.
What might that someone have to say to us, and how would we respond? Voiced by my own child (and guided through her editorial oversight), the message sent through this Portal is an invitation to consider how attention and everyday actions might shift the trajectory of what happens beyond our own lifespans, one possible future among many.
A Portal is Opening is part of the exhibition “Making it Work: Art and Parenting,” on view til July 30th, 2022.
Dear Human at the West Ridge Nature Preserve, Chicago
Join me for Dear Human, a multisensory walk through Chicago’s West Ridge Nature Park, presented through the Roman Susan Arts Foundation as a partner project with the 2021 Chicago Architecture Biennial. Using your smartphone, this walk activates messages from non-human residents: a deer tick, a tree, and others. Bring your own headphones for an immersive experience merging narration with the existing soundscape through site-specific prompts to listen, touch, and find your place within the local ecology. Risograph printed booklets of my map/drawing and narration will be distributed during the opening event, and will be available as a downloadable PDF to be accessible whenever the park is open.
This work is a part of Navigations, a series of artist projects shared and realized in public/common space through Roman Susan.
West Ridge Nature Park is located at 5801 N. Western Avenue
Update: this project is now permanently installed at West Ridge in the form of six wooden trail markers with QR code activation. Grab your headphones and seek them out! You can activate the sound walk during regular park hours from 6 AM – 8 PM daily.
Nature Now at the Lubeznik Center for the Arts, Michigan City
From October 25th, 2021 - February 25th, 2022 you can find six of my large works on paper included as part of the exhibition Nature Now at the Lubeznik Center for the Arts in Michigan City, Indiana.
Nature Now explores the transient and cyclical nature of life on earth, reflecting upon the impact humans have on the world through the work of eight artists, including Herman Aguirre, Doug Fogelson, Stacey Lee Gee, Holly Greenberg, Mark Rospenda, Tom Van Eynde, Heidi Norton and myself.
Join us for an opening reception on Friday, November 5th, 2021 from 5-8pm CT
The Lubeznik Center for the Arts is located at 102 W. 2nd Street in Michigan City, Indiana.
Making Kin At the Center for Humans & Nature
I’m pleased to announce that my work is included in a new online exhibition: Making Kin—Worlds Becoming through the Center for Humans & Nature. Curated by Andrew S. Yang with works from 24 amazing artists, the exhibit offers possibilities for new intimacies and emerging relations with the human and more-than-human world—as well as the wonders, understandings, and complications those acts entail. The show is presented in conjunction with this collection of essays on ecological kinship, too. I’m so honored to be included in this beautiful exhibition alongside some of my favorite humans in the arts - including Mequitta Ahuja, Caitlin Berrigan, Karen Bolender, Norman Long, Rebecca Beachy, James Jack, Rebecca Nakaba, and many others - and I hope you’ll check out the show.
You can view the artworks through the Center for Humans and Nature at www.makingkin.net
Studies for Simultaneous Listening at Roman Susan, Chicago
If you’re in Chicago, join me at dusk on July 27th for Studies for Simultaneous Listening at Roman Susan Gallery, 1224 W Loyola Ave in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood.
Outdoor Projections
Tuesday, July 27 // 8:30-10 PM
Studies for Simultaneous Listening blends the existing soundscape of Roman Susan’s neighborhood with projected video and field recordings imagining the area's ecological past, present, and possible future. These recordings will be part of an audio walking tour guided by non-human inhabitants, currently under development for the nearby West Ridge Nature Park as part of the upcoming Navigations series. Field recordings and projections are activated around dusk tonight and tomorrow, to be experienced directly in the outdoors.
Listening Through the Landscape at NTU CCA, Singapore
Wherever you are, whenever you’re free, lets go for a walk. Andrew S. Yang and I are excited to share “Listening through the Landscape,” a series of short, guided audio walks that explore the nature of time and the ecology of Singapore through trees, soil, and water. Combining narration by Alexis Chen with environmental sounds we collected during the 2020 Covid-19 “Circuit Breaker” period in Singapore, these tours transform everyday spaces into multisensory journeys.
Listening Through the Landscape began while we were inaugural Artists-in-Residence at Yale-NUS College and was created for the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art’s multimedia event Free Jazz III. Sound. Walks. with support from Yale-NUS Dean of Faculty.
These works are meant to be listened to outdoors, with headphones. Just head outside, cue up a walk from the list on your smartphone, and press “Play." Those who prefer reading to sound can download a PDF of the scripts for these walks here.
And: if you’re in the mood for more listening and want to hear more about this work and our residency in general, check out this interview that curator Michelle Lim did with us for the Archepelagic AIR podcast or check out this short video about our work in progress here.
Singapore studio research and an “atlas of uncertainty.”
ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE at YALE-NUS: SINGAPORE
What happens when a residency experience becomes one of sheltering-in-place? Since January I have been collaborating again with fellow artist Andy Yang in Singapore, where we are the inaugural artists in residence at Yale-NUS College, through the generous support of the Tan Chin Tuan Foundation. Here, we have been teaching a course called “Culturing Nature” and responding to the biodiversity of Singapore in many forms. Needless to say, there is a whole lot of biological phenomena to respond to these days, not all of it so good for humankind. While the spaces of studio and community have gotten noticeably smaller recently, our artistic work is expanding to engage the novel coronavirus as part of the complex social ecology of “the garden city” and the ecosystems within our own bodies. So for now stay tuned, stay healthy, and take care.
Extended Practice at the Hyde Park Art Center: Chicago
Motherhood has radically transformed my creative practice and community, so I’m pleased to share a glimpse of that process as a part of the exhibition Extended Self: Transformations and Connections, at the Hyde Park Art Center through January 19th, 2020. Curated by Angela Lopez and Sara Holwerda of Extended Practice, the exhibition explores how motherhood has shaped the work of contemporary artists, including Selina Trepp, Kaitlynn Redell, Wisdom Baty, Jessica Mueller, and Irene Perez, among many others. In the reading room, you’ll find my Creative Kinship Diagram, charting linkages between people, projects, and collectives focused on art, caregiving, and activism - from the speculative to the pragmatic - alongside two of the publication projects I produced through my work with the creative platform Cultural ReProducers: the collaborative zine “Propositions, Manifestos and Experiments,” published by Half Letter Press, and my “Art Fair Adventure Book,” which came out just last month.
"Starting from Somewhere Else"
A Better Tomorrowland at Sidecar Gallery: Indiana
This Spring you can catch some of my recent drawings as part of A Better Tomorrowland, at Sidecar Gallery in Hammond, Indiana. Curated by Paul Hopkin, the exhibition explores many possible futures imagined by many fantastic artists, including Benjamin Zellmer Bellas, Jeffrey Grauel, John Henley, Nick Lowe, Melissa Pokorny, and myself. From the press release:
What is the difference between building a new colony, a new society, and expanding the old in hopes of surviving a nuclear winter? In science fiction we project our desires for better futures. It’s also where we present our abiding fears as potential outcomes, we can’t help ourselves. The many pathways weave into a complicated web. Even theoretical physics becomes entangled in flights of fancy as it turns focus on the Schroedinger position where the outcomes all exist in the same places and at the same times, but separated by universes. Instead of polar opposites we end up inside of endless multiplicity where every outcome is a part of impossible wholeness. Some of us avoid this mode of thinking because it is intellectually challenging. Some of us are thrilled by the difficulty and feel rewarded knowing we were up to the test. Some of us become overwhelmed by the futility. If multiple outcomes are real, our choices feel adjacent to inevitability. After all, if all the outcomes must exist at any given time, where does that leave choice?
"Tomorrowland" will be on view at Sidecar from May 5th through June 2nd, 2018. There's an opening reception on May 5th from 6-10pm. After that you can stop by any Saturday between 1-6pm, or by appointment.
"Co-Adaptation Field Station" at SPACES, Cleveland
I’m honored to be a part of the exhibition 20/20 Hindsight = 40 Years, opening at SPACES in Cleveland, Ohio on Friday, April 20th and on view through June 15th, 2018. Celebrating 40 years of exploration and experimentation at SPACES, the show includes work by 17 artists curated by SPACES Executive Director Christina Vassallo and former Executive Directors: founder James Rosenberger, Susan Channing, and Christopher Lynn. Each curator selected a group of artists who have defined their time at the helm of SPACES. I’ve had an ongoing relationship with SPACES, where I served as Exhibition and PR Coordinator for four years and undertook my first curatorial project before leaving for grad school. Years later I was invited to return as an artist-in-residence through the SPACES World Artist Program, where I developed a body of work focusing on the complexities of fertility and identity. I'm well aware of the range of remarkable artists SPACES has fostered over the past four decades, so it means a whole lot to be included among this stellar lineup, honoring one of this country's longest-running artist-run art spaces.
My new installation for SPACES, CoAdaptation Field Station, is a wall drawing that extends into a research site stocked with books, projected video, and a microscope with specially prepared slides. The space sits between lived realities and imagined futures, suggesting intersecting points that link collective activism, adventure play, interspecies care, and speculative fiction as tools to build resilience and community in a rapidly changing world.
"Guided" at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
Some of my most recent work is made to be ‘seen’ with your eyes closed. This weekend I’m excited to present “Guided,” an exploratory visualization into the emotional architecture of the human body at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art. The event is part of the MCA’s 50th Anniversary event, MCA <3 Chicago, and is a live version of the sound installation I created for Gallery 400 last year. To participate, you’ll need to arrive before regular Museum hours – we’ll meet at 9am at the MCA’s lower level on Saturday, October 22nd. The event is free, but space is limited. Reserve your spot here: https://mcachicago.org/Calendar/2017/10/MCA-Hearts-Chicago/Christa-Donner-Guided
Fall Workshops and Performances: Chicago, Copenhagen, Madison, Berea
This Fall, I'll be leading generative workshops and participatory performances almost every week and in multiple locations, so mark your calendars!
The Art of Making it Work: Reimagining Participation and Production as Artist Parents
September 17th, 2017, 11am-3pm
Extended Practice Series
Chicago Family Picnic, 3701 N Ravenswood Ave, Chicago, IL
As part of my work with Cultural ReProducers and in partnership with the project Extended Practice, I'll lead an idea-generating conversation and strategy-building workshop about “making it work” as a parent and artist. Participants will explore existing artist-led initiatives that address the challenges of artist-parenthood, and will reflect on their own experiences with balancing art-making and child-rearing. Through individual and collaborative activities, participants will identify key needs and desires of artists parents and will develop new models for creating a more sustainable artistic life in Chicago. The workshop includes on-site childcare through Present Place Chicago, and a networking lunch for participants.
Many Possible Futures
September 30th, 2017, 3pm-5pm
Compound Yellow + Self Reliance School
244 Lake St., Oak Park, IL
AND
October 16th, 2017
The Mothernists II: Who Cares for the 21st Century?
Astrid Noack's Atelier, Copenhagen, Denmark
What futures do we hope our children might help to build, and what models can we offer them as a starting point? What do youthful visions of the future bring to the conversation? In the midst of social, environmental, and political unrest, parenting artists and educators play a critical role in activating public imagination while also mindfully engaging the next generation. The goal of this workshop is to identify resonant spaces where these points might intersect. Participants will engage in a series of short writing and drawing exercises as an aid toward imagining, action, and further conversation. Shared responses will become part of a collective archive and small-press publication I'll be producing as part of my work with Cultural ReProducers and the collective Temporary Services through their publishing project, Half Letter Press.
This event is designed for adults raising or otherwise working with young people. The workshop hosted by Compound Yellow + Self-Reliance School includes a special concurrent program for children 4-7 years old. Children will create a multimedia timeline with art education students while the adults work in a separate room, before regrouping for shared conversation.
Ecological Storytelling: Imaginative Experiments for All Ages
October 7th, 2017
UWM Terra Incognita + Bubbler Series
Madison Central Public Library
201 W Mifflin St, Madison, WI
I'll be collaborating with artist and scientist Andrew Yang to lead this hands-on workshop exploring unexpected connections between the things in your everyday life and our natural, artificial, cultural, and imaginable. During this two-hour workshop, co-sponsored by the University of Wisconsin, Madison's Terra Incognita series and the Madison Public Library's Bubbler program, participants of all ages will work together to explore the ecological webs that connect through our lives. Through open-ended prompts, participants will collaboratively devise stories from a blend of drawing, collage, and game playing to spark inter-generational conversation and ecological thinking. In this time of environmental complexity, we need new ways of telling stories that connect us to each other and to our futures, pasts, and present environment. This playful approach to ecological narratives involves the complex, non-linear, and indeterminate. Let’s make art together to invent new relations and new ways of learning!
Of Possible Futures: Imagining How to Get There
November 2, 2017
Berea College, Berea, KY
I'm honored to speak about my work into imaginative time travel as part of the Berea College Convocation Series this November. The lecture will be the keynote for a symposium exploring artistic economies, parenthood and creativity organized by artist Sarah Irvin, who is undertaking an intensive project with the school's community of students raising children. More information: https://www.berea.edu/convocations/convocations-calendar-2017-2018/christa-donner/
Articulating Time and Space: Chicago
I'll be showing a series of original works on paper and the resulting postcards I created for my project, "The Redistribution of Curiosity" as part of the exhibition Articulating Time and Space at the Sullivan Galleries in Chicago this Fall. The exhibition is curated by artist Paola Cabal and physicist Kathryn Schafferin conjunction with the studio/science hybrid course they teach together at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Works are culled from course projects in relation to artists and designers pursuing similar concerns in their practices. From the website:
Where are we in the universe? Is "now" different from other times in cosmic history? To a degree, physics can answer these questions. Yet in doing so, it unsettles and upends our everyday intuitions about how time and space work. Special and general relativity propose radically unfamiliar conceptions of the spacetime structure of our world, while empirical and theoreticalmethods in physics research reach far beyond what humans can sense or even visualize. Articulating Time and Space addresses the ways we personally experience and react to this process of unsettling and upending.
The show will be on view from October 3 - 24, 2017 at the Sullivan Galleries, 33 S State Street, 7th Floor, Chicago, IL. Join us for a closing reception on Saturday, October 21st from 1:30 - 3pm.
Poor Connection, Krabbesholm: Denmark...
From October 19-22 you can catch a minimalist version of my most recent collaboration with Andrew Yang, Spacetimeshipcapsule 20016, which will be part of the exhibition Poor Connection at Four Boxes Gallery at Krabbesholm Højskole in Skive, Denmark. The piece was originally created for the show Poor and Needy, curated by Lise Haller Baggesen and Yvette Brackman around a gigantic old boiler in the basement of the Poor Farm in Little Wolf, WI, and explores the night sky, radiator music, and children's play as entry points to shifting experience through time and space. Keep your eyes peeled for a beautiful catalogue from the show coming out later this year.
Before the show opens you can find me in Copenhagen, where I'll present a time traveling workshop for mothers as part of the conference Mothernists II: Who Cares for the 21st Century? co-sponsored by the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and Astrid Noack's Atelier (ANA) with a dream team of amazing participants. You can find the program for that event here.
Without Power, No Cookies: Chicago
I'm super pleased to be a part of Ohne Kraft, keine Kekse, or Without Power, No Cookies, alongside the fabulous Vesna Jovanovic, Howard Fonda, and Matthew Girson - opens tomorrow night at Slow. Bonus: their special home-brewed beer, created to fit the show's theme (and I hear there will also be some actual cookies). If you're in Chicago, come join us! Slow is located at 2153 W. 21st Street in Chicago, and the show's on view from May 20 - June 17, 2017 by appointment. For more information: https://www.paul-is-slow.info/
Mirrorface at Cleve Carney Gallery
Using ink, polypropylene and transparent vinyl to activate the walls, floor, and full-length modernist windows of Cleve Carney Gallery in Glen Ellyn, IL this March, I look forward to creating a new site-specific installation for Mirrorface, a three-woman exhibition of autobiographical work featuring work by Keiler Roberts, Sarah McEneaney, and myself. The exhibition runs from March 9th - April 13th, 2017 with an all-ages opening reception on Saturday, March 11th from 1-3pm. You can get a sneak peak into our work for the show in the video below:
Our New System at Gallery 400, Chicago
Opening September 9th, 2016, this solo exhibition represents four years of exploration into the complexities of the human organism, investigating collectivities and spaces for new forms of human sociality. From Gallery 400:
Using paper as a tool to both investigate and imagine, Donner employs drawing, collage, printmaking, small-press publications, and large scale installation. Colorful image-scenes propose models of community that move beyond current anthropocentric and capitalist systems, while intricately cut paper structures are used to cast shadows of new constructions. These projected images expand into the physical space of the Gallery, incorporating tables stacked with research materials referencing science fiction, adventure playgrounds, activist projects, and the female-run social structures of wasps, ants, and bees as sources that might direct us toward ways of imaging our communities of the future. For the duration of the exhibition in a dedicated room of the gallery, somatic ‘tours’ will guide visitors through their own visualizations of the hidden architecture of the human body, linking structural and sensory worlds.
Our New System is accompanied by this interview-based publication (download pdf) and received a glowing review in the Chicago Tribune.
For more information and images on the show, plus a whole lot of intergenerational and childcare-supported events I had a hand in: http://gallery400.uic.edu/exhibitions/our-new-system