Visit the SUBMERGENCE COLLECTIVE WEBSITE to view our projects and find out more
The Submergence Collective is a mutually obligate, ever evolving (sometimes decaying), art and ecology research collective. It was co-founded in 2019 by Kaitlin Bryson, Hollis Moore, Mariko Oyama Thomas, and Rachel Zollinger as a transdisciplinary and collaborative response to ecological change. Our projects strive to imagine and facilitate more hopeful possibilities for beings co-existing in the living and dying world. From visual artworks to written works to community education, we work with materials and projects that participate with/in our global ecology, focusing on reparative and sustainable interaction and connection. Our collaborative research and practice has generated myriad approaches, including performative writing, remediative sculpture, digital collage, dye-work, structural and landscape design, mixed-media installations, and community workshops; imbricating Western/ized science with traditional ecological knowledge (TEK); storytelling and mythmaking; and placemaking and place-tending.
As a multidisciplinary team, our members are highly trained in pedagogical theory, qualitative and arts-based research, studio art practices, and ecological design and restoration. We have lectured and taught workshops nationally and internationally, including SUNY Buffalo, University of Arizona, University of New Mexico, University of New South Wales (AU), and Dartington College (UK). Our work has been published in The Journal of Research in Art and Education, Centre of Sustainable Practices of the ArtsQuarterly, Ecoartspace’s Earthkeepers Handbook, The New Farmer’s Almanac, vol. V, and Southwest Contemporary. We have created ecologically restorative projects in Nepal, México, and the U.S., and have exhibited our artwork at 516 Arts, Harwood Gallery, and the Roswell Museum (NM).
We occupy the terrain space(s) of Santa Fe and Albuquerque, New Mexico; Whidbey Island, Washington; and Fayetteville, Arkansas.