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PALOMA BARHAUGH-BORDAS

I am an artist, educator, and activist living and working in Ithaca, New York. My art practice—which expands from print media into installation, as well as social and collaborative practices—works at the intersection of migration, queerness, and ecology. In my recent solo exhibition, Thicker Than Forget, I reflect on physical and geographic boundaries, and shifts in social identity that characterize the COVID-19 pandemic. This multimedia body of work explores the edges of perception in compositions that are wedged into pictorial space. Textile works, including a quilt of cyanotype and mesh fabric printed with photographic images of trees, sky and water, suggested a permeable threshold between art, humans, and nature. I am interested in how art can contribute to ecological knowledge and build interspecies understanding, an inquiry I began investigating by comparing the stories of naturalization—becoming local—between Americans and non-native plants. This work was shown alongside Ellen Gallagher and Alison Saar, among others, through Project V’s 2021 online exhibition space. My work has been shown nationally and internationally including solo exhibitions at the Handwerker Gallery, Buffalo Artists Studios, and Sediment Arts. I have been an artist in residence at ACRE, Women’s Studio Workshop, the Institute for Electronic Arts at Alfred University, MI-Lab in Japan, and Kala Art Institute. Originally from Denver, Colorado, I received a BA in liberal arts from Carleton College in Northfield, MN, and an MFA in Printmaking at Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI.