Heather Parrish

Heather Parrish is a multi-disciplinary artist who grew up traversing the cultural and geographical landscapes of Southeast Asia and the southern United States. Her work questions the nature of boundaries, whether metaphorical, societal or biological. She employs an expanded practice of printmaking, using translucent materials, light projections, paper installation and experimental photography to unsettle simple binaries (interior/exterior, belonging/otherness, static/transient, etc.) inviting consideration of the dynamic potentialities of boundaries as porous and productive sites of exchange.

In this spirit, interdisciplinary collaboration is a sustaining part of her practice including projects with scientists, filmmakers, poets, and activists. Her two primary collaborations are: Scope: The Theater of Collaborative Survival, with biologist/artist Dr. Elizabeth Hénaff (New York University) and acoustic engineer Léo Roussel (Arup Firm), investigating potentialities in microbiome-human partnerships. They recently exhibited at Science Gallery Detroit and the New York Hall of Science. Working the Border, with geographer Leslie Gross-Wyrtzen explores how art and social science collaborations can disrupt disciplinary and political boundaries and engender emancipatory futures. They exhibited at ‘The Line Crossed Us: New Directions in Border Studies’ at University of Lethbridge, Canada, and have a forthcoming book chapter published with Athabasca University Press. Parrish also worked with a geologist to author ‘Shaped by Rivers’, a field guide for ‘Anthropocene Drift’, a field station within Mississippi. An Anthropocene River, the large scale interdisciplinary initiative lead by the Haus der Kulteren der Welt and Max PLanck Institute for the History of Science, with the following exhibition ‘The Shape of a Practice’ at HKW, Berlin, Germany.