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 design, and 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.
Kaitlin Bryson is a queer, transdisciplinary, ecological artist and educator based in Santa Fe, NM concerned with environmental and social justice. She primarily works with fungi, plants, microbes, and biodegradable materials to engage more-than-human audiences, while also facilitating human communities through social practice and environmental stewardship. Her practice is research-based and most often collaborative, highlighting the potency of working like lichens to realize radical change and justice. She is a recipient of the 2022 Anonymous Was A Woman Environmental Arts Grant, as well as the 2022 Future Art Award: Ecosystem X from Mozaik Philanthropy. Bryson has exhibited throughout the United States and Europe, and in Mexico, Ireland, and Nepal as well as in notable festivals such as Ars Electronica (AT) and Politics of the Machine (DE). Her artwork and activism have been featured in books such as “In Search of Mycotopia: Citizen Science, Fungi Fanatics, and the Untapped Potential of Mushrooms”, by Doug Bierend and in the Autumn 2022 Edition of Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture.
Bryson received an MFA in Art & Ecology from the University of New Mexico in 2018, where she concurrently studied art and mycology with research in ecotoxicology. Currently, she holds a Lecturer III faculty position in Art & Ecology at the University of New Mexico and is the Field Coordinator for the Land Arts of the American West Program. Bryson’s transdisciplinary teaching focuses on facilitating ecologically relational practices informed by queer and critical ecology and traditional ecological knowledge, to enroot decolonial, interconnected, contemporary Environmental Art practices.
Hollis Moore is an artist and ecological designer living in Albuquerque, NM, within the historic floodplains of the Middle Rio Grande. She has an MFA and MLA from the University of New Mexico. Her practice focuses on researching the impacts of colonialism, capitalism, and climate change on aridlands with methods of counter-mapping. She responds with art and design that make visible and work with the encounters of multiple species- including plants, animals, fungi, and human communities- living within damaged and shifting landscape assemblages. Currently, Moore is the Southwest Seed Partnership Coordinator at the Institute for Applied Ecology’s southwest office.
Mariko Oyama Thomas is a writer, instructor, and independent scholar currently living in the mountains of Taos, New Mexico with her partner and baby daughter. She has an M.S. in Communication and Research from Portland State University (2013) and a Ph.D. from University of New Mexico in Environmental and Intercultural Communication (2019) as well as a background in creative writing and performance. Her research interests are largely focused on plant-human relationships, environmental justice, and more-than-human communication, with a methodological focus on oral history’s ability to access these subjects. Previous projects include an oral history exploration of plant-human communication, autoethnographic essays on the connections between family storytelling, race, and environment, and a mixed-method study on Western definitions of “nature.” Her current work aims to explore parenthood, birth stories, and expanding the concept of kin, as entry points to more-than-human connection, compassion, and advocacy.
Rachel Zollinger is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and scholar hailing from the Zuni Mountains of New Mexico. She holds a BFA in Sculpture and Drawing from the University of New Mexico, a MFA in Interdisciplinary Art from Sierra Nevada College, and a PhD in Art and Visual Culture Education from the University of Arizona. Her place-based practice and research interests focus on the entanglement of social and ecological systems and the materialization of knowledge practices and orientations on present and future landscapes. Her work has ranged from drawing, mixed media sculpture, site-specific installation, socioecological intervention, and writing media. Her current work explores multispecies and place-based pedagogies in relation to science, environmental, and art education practices.