Adjunct Assistant Professor of Visual Arts and Alumna Linnéa Gad ’22 Featured in Immigrant Artist Biennial
On Sunday, October 1, 2023, Visual Arts alumna Linnéa Gad ’22 will present and perform a new multi-disciplinary work created as part of the Immigrant Artist Biennial on Governor’s Island in New York City.
The work, entitled Shoals, consists of two sculptures made from a welded metal frame clad with lime mortar and oyster shells. “Lime is often viewed simply as a means to an end: cement production, however, lime is not only an essential material in contemporary infrastructure, it also stabilizes pH levels in the ocean and locks CO2 into the ocean floor,” the Biennial’s press release explains.
The focus on marine biogenic calcification has been a throughline in Gad’s sculptures, and over the course of 2024, “as part of an ongoing partnership with Billion Oyster Project, Gad will create sculptures that extend from the organisation’s underwater metal gabion frameworks that are used to rehabilitate oyster growth.” As such, the forthcoming works, as well as Shoals, “present a tactile response to the climate crisis.”
On October 1, from 1-3 pm, the multimedia performance entitled Oyster As Eyes will extend Gad’s “exploration of lime across various dimensions,” ranging from the geological to the art historical, and will include sound composed and performed by New York City artist Will Epstein.
This project was supported, in part, by the Consulate General of Sweden in New York and a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant.
Linnéa Gad is a visual artist from Stockholm, Sweden. She currently collaborates with limestone, oysters, cardboard, bark, and other shell materials that she happens upon. Her work extends across sculpture, printmaking, and installation to create unexpected conversations that awaken empathy for the ongoing vibrant “lives” of these materials. Gad’s approach to the climate crisis is to make tactile responses, as a counterpoint to the theoretical and abstract visualizations of this global issue.