Insurgent pigments. Photo courtesy of Hannah Chalew.
SEPTEMBER’s PIGMENTS AS CATALYSTS presenter was artist Hannah Chalew. Hannah launched the series with her talk, ‘Insurgent Pigments: Engaging with Animate Materiality for a Livable Future.’ Hannah is an artist, educator and environmental activist from New Orleans, whose artwork explores what it means to live in a time of global warming with a collective uncertain future, and specifically what that means for those living in Southern Louisiana. Her practice, which involves working with waste-stream-derived pigments like coal tar, brick remnants, and botanical-diversity-suppressing plants like goldenrod, explores the historical legacies that got us here to help imagine new possibilities for a livable future. Her intricate, sculptural work is specifically rooted in Southern Louisiana, where she lives, as a microcosm of our shifting times.
