Virtual Exhibition
PROGRAM: OUR LAND — INTERNATIONAL ARTISTS EXHIBITION
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
This exhibition is the culmination of six weeks of collaborative work developed through the Our Land program (R.I.O. International Online Residency) in partnership with Moku Art Studio. It brings together four international artists from different corners of the globe around the unifying theme of Our Land.
Each artist developed their personal project within an environment of dialogue, mutual exchange, connection, and introspection—where scientific perspectives and ancestral knowledge expanded the horizons of their creative practices.
WHY A MAP?
We have intentionally chosen to present the participating artists through a cartographic lens to visually emphasize the global interconnection that Our Land represents.
By mapping the artists geographically, we highlight how—regardless of location—we all share a deep reverence and concern for our planet. This spatial representation underscores the interconnected nature of Earth and reflects the collective effort of these artists to draw inspiration from the land and, through their work, inspire others.
VISITING THE EXHIBITION
We invite you to explore the map, locate each artist's geographic origin, and access their project showcases and artistic profiles. This map opens onto a global network of creative voices.
If a project resonates with you, we encourage you to reach out to us or directly to the artists to continue building the networks and connections that enrich each shared experience.
EXHIBITING ARTISTS
Vinothini Satchithananthan
Tamil & USA
Mixed Media & Installation
Vinothini Sachithananthan is an Eelam Tamil artist, writer, and naturalist living on Indigenous lands in California. Centered primarily on drawing, natural dyes, collage, and installation, her work explores memory, displacement, belonging, and the intimate relationship between the body and the land. Working with non-toxic natural dyes extracted from barks, roots, leaves, flowers, and insects, she conceives textiles as a second skin—a vessel for memory.
Grounded in ancestral knowledge, ecology, and lived experience, her practice views the landscape as a living archive and a site of sanctuary and remembrance. Trees, stones, textiles, and botanical materials become active collaborators in installations that occupy a space between sculpture, ritual, and offering, fostering quiet dialogues between her ancestral homeland and her adopted home in California.
Sachithananthan’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. In 2024, she completed an artist residency in Nepal. She is also a published poet.
Robert Henderson
USA
Origami Sónico
Robert Henderson is a multimedia artist and musician based in Tucson, Arizona. His artistic practice encompasses site-specific sound installations, sculpture, and painting.
He works extensively with visual programming languages such as Plugdata and Pure Data, and creates custom digital instruments and synthesis patches, often incorporating field recordings. This software-based approach is integrated with physical hardware, such as tape loops, canvases with transducers, or other embedded electronic components.
His recent site-specific installations and exhibitions include the co-creation of a multimedia installation at Wave Archive titled “Border Signals,” which examines border surveillance infrastructure, and “Plein Air,” a collaborative live performance and generative audio installation set in the Whitewater Draw wetlands. He frequently collaborates with poet Johanna Skibsrud on public workshops and multimedia projects. In addition, she co-directs the Supersensi collective with Betsy Burr.
Ariel Maldonado
Mexico & USA
Técnica de Macramé
Ariel Maldonado is a sculptor based in Los Angeles. Although her early training focused on ceramics, she has begun to explore the textile arts. Her creative work is closely tied to and heavily influenced by her professional career, and it conveys the consequences and causes of the planet’s deteriorating health (colloquially known as “climate change”). While most people feel overwhelmed by the immensity and complexity of the problems related to the planet’s deteriorating health, she finds in it a deep well filled with endless opportunities to learn and explore creatively.
She is currently interested in exploring two aspects:
● The use of art as a means to visualize different scientific concepts.
● The creation of artworks without plastic or other materials that break down into microplastics.
Lydia Fort
USA
Fotografía Contemplativa
Lydia Fort is a theater director, researcher, and educator, and her creative research explores how artistic practice can foster deeper relationships between human beings, the non-human world, and place. She is an associate professor of Theater Studies at Emory University, where her work bridges the fields of performance, ecology, and environmental humanities.
Her current research focuses on the development of “dramaturgy of kinship,” an interdisciplinary practice that investigates how theatrical creation can foster reciprocity, attentiveness, and a sense of ecological belonging. Through directing, writing, photography, and contemplative practices in the field, she examines how acts of perception shape our ethical relationships with the living world.
*Alama za Msitu* (Traces of the Forest) represents an unexpected expansion of that research. Created during the NUESTRA TIERRA VIII residency, the series emerged from photographic observations made while traversing the same forests over the course of several months. Rather than viewing photography as an end in itself, Fort approaches the camera as a tool for inquiry: a way of asking ourselves how we learn to pay attention, to pause, and to form a relationship with a place.
Fort's work has been presented in theaters, conferences, and interdisciplinary artistic settings throughout the United States. She is particularly interested in creating experiences that invite the audience not only to observe, but also to engage in practices of mindfulness, curiosity, and ecological connection.
OUR OPEN STUDIO
What is it?
Our Open Studio marks the conclusion of the program, where artists freely share—from their own perspectives—their creative processes over the past month and a half of work. It’s fascinating to see how each artist chooses to share with the audience not the final work, but the process—what happened between the birth of an idea and the final result.
This is—at least in our view—the true value of a project where the final artwork is merely a story of the journey taken.
If you’re curious to see how the artists think to arrive at the final artwork you saw on the virtual map, this video is for you. Discover this video through the eyes of these different artists who, despite being in different parts of the world with different settings, stories, and cultures, spoke about something they all have in common: Our Earth.