Summer/Fall 2025:
This summer I’m honored to take part in “Crisis. Art. Church. Continents. – Visions of Laudato si’” at the Diözesanmuseum Bamberg, on view July 12–November 4, 2025. Conceived for the 10th anniversary of Laudato si’, the exhibition invites one work from each continent to ask how artists are responding to ecological crisis—floods, extreme heat, plastic waste—and to the social inequities braided into those emergencies. Each gallery focuses on a continent, creating six distinct entry points into a shared planet. dioezesanmuseum-bamberg.de
I’m representing North America with a sculpture made from textile remnants—a material language I return to because it carries the story of supply chains, extraction, and care. In Bamberg, that conversation meets a profound textile history: the museum houses the Imperial Robes linked to Emperor Henry II and Kunigunde (early 11th century), the vestments of Pope Clement II, and the Gunthertuch (an 11th-century Byzantine silk tapestry). Standing with these garments, which are objects of devotion, power, and repair, reframes today’s fabric waste as an ethical question as much as a material one.
The curators have gathered artists whose practices speak across geographies: Aïda Muluneh on access to water (Africa), Ari Bayuaji weaving “ghost nets” into textiles (Asia), Andreas Franke’s Plastic Ocean (Europe), José Luis Loría Méndez (South America), and Hilary Wardhaugh’s collaborative #EverydayClimateCrisis (Oceania). Together, the works trouble clichés while foregrounding responsibility and justice, core to the encyclical’s call for “integral ecology,” which ties care for Earth to care for one another.
Laudato si’ was released on May 24, 2015; a decade later, its urgency has sharpened. This exhibition extends that reflection into the museum, where visitors move between artworks and hands-on stations (a “postcards of change” game, a photo initiative, and a loom for upcycling textiles). The show invites looking, and also making: a small rehearsal for the larger repairs we owe each other and the living world.
Why textiles?
Textiles index the climate story: land and water use in fiber cultivation; petrochemicals in synthetics; labor and waste in fast fashion; and the possibilities of repair. My “bundle” works emerged from asking how we might carry less, mend more, and make value visible in what we discard. Bringing a textile-waste sculpture into dialogue with Bamberg’s sacred garments treats cloth as archive and memory as well as a map toward different systems of making and sharing.
If you go
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Exhibition: Crisis. Art. Church. Continents. – Visions of Laudato si’
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Venue: Diözesanmuseum Bamberg, Domplatz 5, 96049 Bamberg
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Dates: July 12 – November 4, 2025 (public tours Fridays at 15:30)
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Tickets & details: See the museum’s exhibition page and schedule. dioezesanmuseum-bamberg.de
I’m grateful to be in conversation with curators who are building bridges between art, community, and environmental action, and to share space with artists working at the intersection of material intelligence and ecological repair.
