Field Companion
Field Companion
Rowan University Art Gallery presents
September 7 to October 30, 2021
Philadelphia-based artists Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib, known for their fantastical moving images and alternate realities, have created a new immersive film and installation for Rowan University Art Gallery. Field Companion, set in a microcosmic forest, is inspired by the pine barrens that dot Southern New Jersey.
Like many, the duo found refuge and solace throughout the COVID-19 pandemic hiking and foraging in these remote, natural landscapes. As America's social fabric frayed deeply over recent years, they considered forest ecosystems in terms of symbiotic and collaborative relationships that sustain coexistence and community.
In Field Companion, the forest has been condensed and transplanted to a terrarium in the artists' studio. Twelve cubic feet of pines, shrubs, ferns, moss, fungus and carnivorous plants are reflected infinitely in the terrarium's mirrored walls and captured with a motion-controlled camera and specialized macro lens that dramatically shift the scale and perspective of this miniature landscape. Living dwellers—snails, slugs, and insects inhabit the miniature ecosystem, accompanied by digitally rendered part-animal, part-human creatures. Through their conversations and interactions, they look forward, investigating progressive methods of sustainability. Bringing attention to questions surrounding social responsibility and community, Hironaka and Suib transform their microcosmic film set into the home of chimeric forest dwellers who consider themes of precarity, mutualism, and collaborative survival.
Learn more about Hironaka and Suib's process on this State of the Arts NJ clip - Field Companion: Nadia Hironaka & Matthew Suib.
You can watch a video of the installation on our YouTube channel - Field Companion installation.
Also enjoy clips from the pineLAND ART + ECOLOGY walk with the artists, Professor Duran, and Professor Kitson's Glass Art & Heritage Landscapes class that took place at Black Run Preserve in Evesham, NJ on Oct 15, 2021 - pineLAND ART + ECOLOGY walk.
This project was produced with support from Rowan University Art Gallery and Locust Projects, Miami. Additional support is provided by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
Installation photography by Constance Mensh courtesy of Rowan University Art Gallery.
Recommended Reading
The Mushroom at the end of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, 2015By investigating one of the world's most sought-after fungi, The Mushroom at the End of the World presents an original examination into the relation between capitalist destruction and collaborative survival within multispecies landscapes, the prerequisite for continuing life on earth.
The Overstory: A Novel, Richard Powers, 2018
The Overstory, winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of―and paean to―the natural world.
John Cage: A Mycological Foray: Variations on Mushrooms, John Cage, 2020
Imagined as an extended mushroom-foraging expedition, John Cage: A Mycological Foray gathers together Cage’s mushroom-themed compositions, photographs, illustrations and ephemera.
Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures, Merlin Sheldrake, 2020
In Entangled Life, the brilliant young biologist Merlin Sheldrake shows us the world from a fungal point of view, providing an exhilarating change of perspective.
Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, adrienne maree brown, 2017
Inspired by Octavia Butler's explorations of our human relationship to change, Emergent Strategy is radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help designed to shape the futures we want to live.
Also Screening
Moon Viewing Platform was a large-scale, collaborative and interdisciplinary public installation that transformed a neglected stretch of open-air land into a large-scale viewing garden featuring a film projected across a 150′ wide building facade and a series of musical performances. The garden/installation was inspired by karesansui (Japanese dry landscape garden), and during its development, provided the setting for the film Moon Viewing. The film and installation invited viewers to enter another world for a moment––through the senses and the imagination––to engage in commemorative gatherings that celebrate creativity, compassion and community as essential components of human life. We bring this monumental video to a gallery setting for an intimate viewing experience.
The films of Moon Viewing, brought cosmological awareness to an abandoned urban fragment, a nether zone that starred as both a film set and as a viewing garden within the city of Philadelphia. Taking inspiration from the metaphysical aesthetics of the Japanese garden, particularly the karesansui, or “dry gardens” of rock and sand associated with Zen Buddhism; Moon Viewing showcased an assembly of gardeners comprised of artists, activists, chefs, musicians and the next generation of humanitarians. Some of those featured include artist Sarah McEneaney; chef and activist, Cristina Martinez; and musician, Harold E. Smith. Designed to draw us inward, eight short stories follow the lunar phases, casting a spell of moonlight for precious moments of respite from our troubled and troubling world.
Moon Viewing Platform hosted public performances by Joshua Abrams and Natural Information Society, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Anaïs Maviel, Harold E. Smith, Bismuth Quartet, Hyunjin Cha, Keir Neuringer, Keisuke Yamada, and Brooke Sietinsons / Nathalie Shapiro / Tara Burke (trio).
About the Artists
Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib work collaboratively on films, videos, public artworks, and immersive installations spanning over a decade, often extending their collaboration to include other artists, musicians, and composers. Their practice embraces research and experimentation, encompassing historical fact, popular fiction, and creative speculation.
Working across moving-image culture and mass media idioms, they build counter mythologies, alternate or parallel realities, and forward-looking visions of the world around us.
The Philadelphia-based artists have been collaborators since 2008. They are recipients of several honored awards including a 2015 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, Pew Fellowships in the Arts, and Fellowships from CFEVA and Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Their work has been widely exhibited both domestically and abroad at venues including, Fondazione MAXXI (Rome), New Media Gallery (Vancouver), The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), UCLA Hammer Museum, PS1/MoMA, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Arizona State University Art Museum. They have been artists-in-residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts, the Banff Centre, Marble House Project, and the Millay Colony for Arts. Matthew Suib is co-founder of Greenhouse Media and Nadia Hironaka serves as a professor and department chair of film and video at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Hironaka & Suib are represented by Locks Gallery. The couple, along with their daughter and one cat reside in South Philly.