Climate Migrations  ||  Conversations

Climate Migrations // Conversations

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Upcoming

03/15: Cian Dayrit + Kristi Rangel

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Past

02/29: Jaime González + Henry G. Sanchez

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11/11: Robert Machiri + Erika Mei Chua Holum

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at the Climate Migrations exhibit

POST Houston, X-Atrium [map]

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All events are free and open to the public.

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Friday, March 15, 2024

6:30 - 8:00PM

Cian Dayrit + Kristi Rangel

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An artist talk with Mitchell Center Visiting Artist Cian Dayrit and Kristi Rangel at the Houston Climate Justice Museum.

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Cian Dayrit will speak about his counter-mapping workshops in Houston and the Philippines to excavate histories of imperialism, extraction, and displacement among historically marginalized people, while summoning new imaginaries that recognize the overlapping global struggles and resistance. Cian Dayrit’s solo exhibition Liberties Were Taken will open at the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston on May 31, 2024. The exhibition focuses on works throughout the artist’s career in the Philippines, as well as works created through a series of counter-mapping workshops in Houston and around the world.

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Kristi Rangel, artist and curator of the Witness Series, will talk about her work in bringing about the multi-year project that explores the many profound experiences that communities of color have in the land of Southeast Texas. An installation featuring artists from Part One of 2024 Witness Series, “Rooted”: Immigration, Migration and Greenspaces can be viewed at the Climate Migrations exhibit.Every Witness experience is designed to bring communities together through the power of nature and provide historically under-served communities with greater access to nature-based opportunities.

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Cian Dayrit is a Manila-based multidisciplinary artist working in painting, sculpture, and installation. The phrase “counter-cartography” is used by Dayrit to describe many well-known works of hand-embroidered textiles that transform historic maps into portraits of contemporary social conditions. Counter-cartography is used by the artist as a pedagogical practice to chart histories of imperialism, industrialization, and systems of subjugation that shape geographical boundaries and cultural narratives globally. Working together with artists and activists in Houston, the Blaffer will present Dayrit’s artworks and Countermapping Workshops to excavate histories of imperialism, extraction, and displacement among historically marginalized people, while summoning new imaginaries that recognize the overlapping global struggles and resistance.

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Kristi Rangel is a self-taught, multi-disciplinary artist, who was born in Austin, Texas. Kristi brings to her artistic practice the passion and dedication to community honed by many years as an educational, public health, and city government leader. Starting her artistic phase later in life means, she brings a different perspective and unique insights to her work. Kristi is the Houston Coalition Against Hate’s (HCAH) 2021 Emerging Artist. Her series, “Seven”, will be exhibited in the galleries of several HCAH members. This series focuses on the themes of race, gender, equity and environmental justice. Kristi is currently in the planning phase of several public art pieces that will be done in partnership with the community.

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Thursday, February 29, 2024

6:30 - 7:45PM

Jaime González + Henry G. Sanchez

Lost and New Horizons: Re-Imagining Houston’s New Ecologies

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What happened to the Eden of the Texas Gulf Coast, before the European colonists appeared?

Can we return to the “pristine” before 1492, and did it ever exist? Jaime and Henry talk about the new types of ecologies that have emerged in Houston since the arrival of humans in the Ice Age. And they consider what this means now in the age of globalization and rapid, cascading change. They will talk about how scientific, artistic, philosophical, environmental, conservationist, spiritual, moral, legal, local, and Indigenous voices need to converse with each other about what is necessary for a healthy biodiverse ecosystem amidst Houston’s urban sprawl.

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Jaime González is an award-winning ecologist, environmental educator, communicator, and collaborative leader who has worked in the Houston and Texas conservation movement for 25 years. His work centers on restoring and teaching about nature for climate resilience, human health and wellbeing, and wildlife support -particularly in disinvested communities. He is also passionate about connecting children into the wonders of nature and placemaking through restoration, storytelling, and photography. Jaime proudly serves as board chair for the North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE), the institution which sets the

standards for high quality environmental education in the US and beyond.

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Henry G. Sanchez is a Houston based interdisciplinary social practice artist. He is the founder of the Bio-Art Bayou-torium, (2018-present), a bilingual, socially engaged bio-art project constructed in a shipment container along Houston’s Buffalo Bayou. The Bayou-torium’s mission is to foster stewardship of Houston's Bayous from residents of Houston’s Hispanic East End neighborhoods. From 2015-2022, Sanchez established the Law Office Center for Citizenship and Art (L.O.C.C.A.), in Houston’s East End as a programming space for artists and social justice activists to collaborate on issues confronting the Latino/a/x, Hispanic and Mexican-American community experience. Sanchez created the ENGLISH KILLS PROJECT (2012-2018, in Brooklyn, New York), another social-bio-art project that proposed community-based strategies to introduce bio-remediation in a Superfund site called Newtown Creek. Sanchez is 2014 M.F.A. graduate of Art Practice in Interdisciplinary Arts, from the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, New York. He was the 2022-23 inaugural Artist-in-Residence for the Buffalo Bayou Partnership in Houston, TX.

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Saturday, November 11, 2023‍

2:00 - 3:30 PM

Robert Machiri + Erika Mei Chua Holum

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Robert ‘Chi’ Machiri born in 1978, in Zimbabwe. Machiri is a ‘sound worker’, a DJ and hoarder of things inspired by his biographical recollection of music and interest in sonic objects. His work exists at the juncture of two streams of practice, curatorial projects and art production presented through an embodied critique; a process of learning and unlearning that interweaves sound, music and image-making. His most notable project PUNGWE is an ‘anti-disciplinary’ project that circles African soundings with related contemporary arts discourses and spaces.

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Erika Mei Chua Holum (she/they) is a PhD student in the Museum Professionals track and the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Assistant Curator at the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston. She holds an MA in Museum and Exhibition Studies from the University of Illinois Chicago and a Masters in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her curatorial work and research focus on intimacies and interconnected (hi)stories revealed through artistic practices, south-south relationships, ways of gathering, and archival methods following forms of historical displacements.

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Part of Ecofictions and Understories, a city-responsive program supported by the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts.

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