Here & Now showcases a selection of artists living and working in the Finger Lakes and Central New York regions. These artists engage, directly or obliquely, with the contradictions of this place: its layered histories, its shifting cultural and environmental landscapes, the tensions between rural and urban identities, and the negotiation between local and global narratives. It brings together a dynamic range of practices that reflect the vibrant and interconnected creative ecosystem surrounding Cornell and its communities.

Tyler Barker, Andrea Kastner, Mafalda Reis Moore, and Heather Swenson engage with the built environment, questioning traditional boundaries between landscape and architecture. Their works on view consider the complex interplay of natural and artificial systems, where place emerges through both physical and virtual realms, continually reshaped by human and environmental forces.

In contrast, Deale Hutton, Erik Lasky, Nathan Loda, Kari Varner, and Daisy Wiley focus on our relationship with the natural world, examining how extractive practices like forestry, fishing, and agriculture shape both our understanding of the environment and our growing dependence on it, calling into question the foundations of how we understand, relate to, and manipulate our surroundings.

Matthew Glaysher and Renqian Yang offer yet a different approach, focusing on materiality as both process and concept. Through the transformation of elemental or traditionally utilitarian materials, they push boundaries of perception, creating new ways to see and understand objects, their origins, and their potential meanings.

Finally, Maryam Adib, DeCarlo Logan, Emmalyn Pure, Cai Quirk, and Grace Sachi Troxell highlight the body as an inescapable site of experience and identity. Their works underscore how geography and social context shape our embodied encounters, where personal and collective histories converge to form a continually evolving sense of self.

Exhibition curated by Rodrigo Guzman-Serrano and Camaron Cohen.

Exhibition supported in part by the Mary Hyde Field Endowment and the Donald and Maria Cox Exhibition Endowment.

Exhibition website live & archived