Campus Directory

Pronouns he, him, his, his, himself

Division Arts Division

Department/College/Unit Art Department

Title Assistant Professor

Affiliation Faculty

Other UCSC Campus Affiliation Center for Agroecology

Faculty Type Regular Faculty

Web Site

Primary Office Location Elena Baskin Building H
H8

Office Hours for Students/ Office Hours Mondays (by appointment)

Mail Stop Art Department

Biography, Education and Training

My practice is rooted in site-specificity, a concept I approach not as a static condition but as an active, evolving relationship between art, place, and ecology. Over the past two decades, I have explored how artistic processes can engage with environmental and social systems, particularly through food, agriculture, and landscape. I see site-specific art as a form of deep listening—an attunement to the materials, histories, and ecologies of a place that challenges the conventional autonomy of the art object.

My work often unfolds in collaboration with farmers, botanists, cooks, researchers, and local communities, forming networks of exchange that extend beyond the traditional boundaries of art institutions. In projects like Restauro (32nd São Paulo Biennial, 2016), I worked with settlements of Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) to create a system of environmental restoration through agroecological practices, rethinking how an artwork might nourish both landscapes and people. This interest in food as a medium led to further collaborations, such as at the Serpentine Galleries in London (2017), where I worked with foragers, organic growers, and illustrators to develop an edible intervention and public program.

In recent years, I have expanded this research through residencies and academic work, investigating site-specificity in relation to language, translation, and pedagogy. My most recent project Dehydrated Landguages explores the ways in which climate, literature, and perception intersect, particularly through the metaphors we use to describe arid landscapes. I am interested in how language shapes our ability to sense, respond to, and repair environmental crises.

At its core, my practice seeks to dissolve the distinctions between art and ecology, object and context, artist and collaborator. I approach making as a process of care—one that involves learning from the specificity of a place while imagining new ways of inhabiting and restoring it.

Research Interests

site-specificity, agroecology, agroforestry, global warming