Talk

MFA Fine Arts presents a talk by Mary Mattingly.

Through photography and sculpture, Mary Mattingly makes proposals. She builds sculptural ecosystems that prioritize access to food, shelter, and clean water, and maps, and photographs the supply chains of her photographic tools. In 2016, supported by a large community, Mattingly led Swale, a floating food forest in New York’s harbor, providing public access to foraging perennial plants and challenging the city’s ban on public land harvesting. This initiative led to NYC Parks’ first edible park, the Foodway in the Bronx in 2017. In 2021, in collaboration with +MoreArt and watershed communities, Mattingly launched the Public Water campaign, spotlighting New York City’s drinking watershed and disparities in clean water access, particularly for those living within the watershed. Her work is driven by a commitment to co-building ecological systems that provide access to water, food, and shelter within the climate crisis. Her work is often collaborative and public.

Mattingly’s work has been exhibited at the Cuenca Biennale in Ecuador, the Gangwon Triennale in Korea, Storm King Art Center, Socrates Sculpture Park, the International Center of Photography, the Seoul Art Center, the Brooklyn Museum, deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, and the Palais de Tokyo. It has been shown in the Barbican Gallery in London and Robert Mann Gallery in New York. With the Bronx Museum of the Arts she participated in the smARTpower project in Manila. Mattingly has been awarded grants and fellowships from the Knight Foundation, the Harpo Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, and the Art Matters Foundation. Mattingly is a 2023 recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship for an upcoming project, Shoal, a floating salt marsh.

Her work has been featured in books such as the Whitechapel/MIT Press Documents of Contemporary Art series titled Nature and edited by Jeffrey Kastner, Triple Canopy’s Speculations (The Future Is...) published by Artbook, Henry Sayre’s A World of Art, 8th edition, published by Pearson Education Inc. and is included in Art21’s New York Close Up series. Mattingly lives and works in New York.

Talks is a series of lectures by artists, writers and critics presented by MFA Fine Arts. Talks are held on Tuesdays at 3:00pm at 133 West 21st Street in Room 101C and on Zoom. Participation in the Q&A is limited to MFA Fine Arts students attending the lecture in person.

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