Hometown: Albuquerque, NM

Website: http://www.ninaelder.com

Dates in Sitka: 2017-04

Nina Elder is an artist, adventurer, and arts administrator. She grew up in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and New Mexico where she cultivated love for the land and curiosity about its use. After earning an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, Nina returned to northern New Mexico where she co-founded an off-the-grid artist residency program called PLAND: Practice Liberating Art through Necessary Dislocation followed by several years as the Residency Program Director at the Santa Fe Art Institute. Nina’s work is exhibited and collected nationally, and has been included in publications such as Art in America, VICE Magazine, and New American Paintings.Nina examines historic land use and its cycles of production, consumption, and waste. Mines, bombing ranges, and junk heaps are source material for her landscape paintings and representational drawings that explore the line between land and landscape, beauty and banality. She has backpacked into mines, travelled to Arctic Cold War military sites, and obtained government clearance to tour the Nevada Nuclear Test Site. She has drawn with radioactive charcoal, ore from mines, and dam silt. Her personal experience of research is reflected through performative, narrative presentations that are equal parts travel log, artist talk, personal story-sharing, and scientific inquiry, as well as a call for greater curiosity and engagement with the world.
Nina is part of the 2017 Tidelines Journey.
“A component of this exploration will focus on the ethics and morals of our role, as travelers, artists, consumers, and citizens, within the cacophony of climate change. With a search for quietude and pristine nature rendered nearly impossible, even in the far flung wildernesses of Alaska, this exploration of noise in the natural environment has vast potential to amplify participants’ understanding of the contemporary state of sound and silence.”