Hi, I’m Laura.

I’m an activist, artist, scholar, educator and consultant with a transdisciplinary research-based art practice living on unceded lands of the Multnomah, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Cowlitz bands of the Chinook, Tualatin, Kalapuya, Molalla and many other Tribes who made their homes along the Columbia River.

My research-based art practice fosters alternative knowledge production oriented to break the fixed, linear-dichotomic, patriarchal, western power-knowledge nexus in the dominant scientific knowledge production system. My practice includes installation, media production, activism, collaboration, performance art, dance, and writing, extending across social / political borders, including work within LGBTQ2S+ communities, architecture and urban planning. I work predominantly in the US and Mexico. My focus is social vulnerability to climate change, gender and environment, intersectionality, and disasters through an eco-feminist lens. I am a published member of the collective EnJust Network for enviornmental justices, Kiel Germany, and the American Association of Geographers.

In 2020 and again in 2021-2023 I was an artist / researcher in residence with CIESAS Noreste, Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropologia Social, a public research center for Social Anthropolgy based in Monterrey Mexico. 

During the 2021-23 residency, I produced two new works that addressed what I was living, observing, and thinking about:

Mujeres del agua: un Manifiesto colectivo. (en: Women of Water: a Collaborative Manifesto) This project brings the lived experience and wisdom of female / trans identified participants affected by the repeated water crisis in Monterrey Mexico, front and center, to ask: What do female / trans identified people know? What do female / trans identified people say? What is the relation between female / trans identified people and water? The goal of this project is to bring the conversations of female / trans identified participants, as authors of their own experiences as care laborers, to the public domain that extends beyond patriarchal, elitist institutions to emphasize a.) the need for transparent decision making processes that include queer and feminist perspectives and their bodies; b.) water as an entity with rights that requires legal guardians to prevent its exploitation.

Poesia para el bien común. (en: Poetry of the Commons) is a project that incorporates art, activism and technology in order to make visible the concerns and desires as stated by the citizens of Monterrey Mexico.

The project begins with citizen participation through conversations that address justice issues important to the participant. The comments are uploaded to a dedicated website for public access and comment. At the second phase, the uploaded information is projected onto buildings in obvious, public locations for continued public access. New comments uploaded through monitors, group events, public presentations, or transmitted to reader boards located at key sites around Monterrey, create a collective poetry from anonymous participants: a Poetry of the Commons, or Poesia para el bien común.

During the project residencies I led classes and workshops that examined ethics and activism. These workshops, classes, and gatherings include artists, activists, designers, educators, concerned citizens, life long learners, and others.

Examples of classes:

Ethics of Community Engagement in Social Art Practice - Artes del Tecnológico de Monterrey, Monterrey Mexico, a preeminent Latin American University of Art and Design.

Art as Resistance in Contemporary Culture - Escula Adolfo Prieto I CONARTE, Monterrey Mexico, a renovated steel mill that is now several contemporary exhibition and studio spaces for international, national artists and students.

In the United States, I have been presented at Open Engagement, Queens Museum, Queens NY; ISEA, Albuquerque NM; Time Mutations, Buffalo, NY; On the Boards, Seattle WA; Hugo House, Seattle WA; TBA Festival for Portland Institute on Contemporary Art, Portland OR; The Southern Theater, Minneapolis MN, and ODC, San Francisco, through the SCUBA National Touring Network for Dance.

Internationally, I have been presented at DOCUMENTA 13, Kassel Germany; Time Mutations, Bauhaus-Universität, Weimar Germany; The Guapamacátaro Center for Art and Ecology, Michoacan Mexico; NoAutomatico, Monterrey Mexico; LAB Nuevo Leon, Monterrey Mexico; Artes del Tecnológico de Monterrey, Monterrey Mexico, Adolfo Prieto, Monterrey Mexico.

Project support includes Femsa, CONARTE, Lab NL, Escuela Adolfo Prieto, the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, Technē Institute for Arts and Emerging Technologies, Department of Media Study University at Buffalo, the McAloon Conference Grant, Artist Trust (2 Fellowships for Choreography and a GAP Grant), the Seattle Mayors Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs, 4 Culture, Art Patch, Meet the Composer, West Sound Arts Council, the Arizona State Arts Commission.