Emerson Contemporary

A Sentient Land: Aesthetic Alliances with Forests, Beetles, Salt, and Air
2026-01-21 12:00 - 2026-03-28 18:00 (America/New_York)
Nelly-Eve Rajotte, Les arbres communiquent entre eux à 220 hertz, 2024. Video installation: 3-channel 4K video, colour, generative sound, 25 min; modular synthesizer, electrodes, and tree. VFX artist and software developer: Codrin-Mihail Tablan Negrei. Courtesy of the artist.

A Sentient Land: Aesthetic Alliances with Forests, Beetles, Salt, and Air, a four-person exhibition featuring works made through innovative intersections of science, aesthetics, and spirituality.

Artists Margaux Crump, Julia Krupa, Eileen Ryan, and Nelly-Eve Rajotte realize the potential of communicating directly and sharing authorship with the materials they use to make their art. Their artistic practices are intuitive and collaborative, enabling trees, stones, salt, and air, among other materials, to inform the creative process and the resulting potential meanings. Their methods include a cloud chamber, oral history, bio-sonification, LIDAR scanning, fumage, and saining.

The resulting works of art forge stronger interspecies connections and increased empathy and hope for the future. These innovative modes of working also raise questions: do the artists translate on behalf of the materials? How do speculation and anthropomorphism fit into these explorations of restoration, time, and scale? The four immersive installations engage viewers in dynamic aesthetic experiences that may linger beyond the gallery as a shift in perspective.

Curated by Shana Dumont Garr

Exhibition catalogue featuring essays by Shana Dumont Garr, Doctoral Candidate, and Martina Tanga, Ph.D.

Press Release

Artist Reception, A Sentient Land: Artistic Alliances with Forests, Beetles, Salt, and Air
2026-01-21 17:00 - 19:00 | Media Art Gallery
Wednesday, January 21, 5:00 – 7:00 pm

Media Art Gallery, 25 Avery Street, Boston MA

Celebrate the opening of this groundbreaking four-person exhibition featuring artists Margaux Crump, Julia Krupa, Eileen Ryan, and Nelly-Eve Rajotte, who blur the boundaries between creator and material, science and art, human and more-than-human.

Experience immersive installations that invite direct dialogue with the natural world. Through innovative methods including bio-sonification, cloud chambers, LIDAR scanning, and ancient practices like fumage and saining, these artists share authorship with trees, stones, salt, and air itself.

This is your first opportunity to encounter works that challenge traditional notions of artistic agency and forge new pathways for interspecies connection. Witness how forests communicate at 220 hertz, how materials become collaborators, and how art can shift our relationship with the living world.

Meet the artists and the curator, Shana Dumont Garr, and explore questions that bridge aesthetics, ecology, and empathy: What happens when materials inform their own representation? How do we translate on behalf of the more-than-human?

Light refreshments will be served.

Exhibition runs January 21 – March 28, 2026Gallery hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 12–6 PM

Free and open to the public

image: Eileen Ryan

In Conversation: Nelly-Eve Rajotte and Margaux Crump
2026-01-22 12:00 - 13:00
Top: Margaux Crump, bottom: Nelly-Eve Rajotte.

In conjunction with A Sentient Land: Aesthetic Alliances with Forests, Beetles, Salt, and Air

Thursday, January 22, 2026 | 12–1 PMEmerson Contemporary25 Avery Street, Boston, MA 02111

Join artists Nelly-Eve Rajotte and Margaux Crump for an intimate conversation about their innovative practices of collaboration with the natural world.

Rajotte will discuss her work with bio-sonification and how she enables trees to generate their own sonic landscapes, including her installation Les arbres communiquent entre eux à 220 hertz, which translates forest communication into immersive audiovisual experience. Crump will share insights into her process of working with materials as co-creators, exploring how stones, beetles, and other elements inform the artistic outcome.

Together, they’ll explore questions at the heart of A Sentient Land: How do we share authorship with non-human collaborators? What does it mean to translate on behalf of materials? How can art deepen our empathy and connection across species?

This conversation offers a rare opportunity to hear directly from two artists reimagining the relationship between maker and material, challenging us to consider the agency of the more-than-human world.

Free and open to the publicNo registration required

Public Art Walking Tour with artists Elisa Hamilton and Clareese Hill *RESCHEDULED to April 18, 2026
2026-04-18 14:00 - 15:30
Join artists Elisa Hamilton and Clareese Hill on a special artist lead walking tour of their two new public art projects Glimpses of Glapion and The Black Boston Dream Oracle in the Beacon Hill neighborhood.

Meeting Point: Boston Common Visitor’s Center

Elisa Hamilton’s project Glimpses of Glapion will present a series of digital vignettes honoring the life and legacy of Louis Glapion. Glapion was a French, biracial hairdresser and barber who, together with his friend George Middleton, built and owned what is now considered the oldest extant house in Beacon Hill, located at 5 Pinckney Street. While more is known about Middleton, the artist’s research has uncovered glimpses of Glapion that speak to an interesting and noteworthy life based in Beacon Hill. Hamilton seeks to honor Glapion and enliven curiosity about his lived experiences in our city. The AR experience will be available on Hoverlay and accompanied by a research document designed for educational purposes.

Clareese Hill’s The Black Boston Dream Oracle is a speculative reimagining of The Complete Fortune Teller and Dream Book written by Chloe Russel, a 19th-century Black woman from Massachusetts. By blending historical wisdom with future-focused fabulations, the Black Boston Dream Oracle will provide a unique space for reflection, healing, and imagining new possibilities for liberation and collective well-being through early Black feminist thought. The Oracle will be presented as an Extended Reality (XR) experience available on the Hoverlay application, accompanied by a web-based research document designed for educational purposes.
