Lauren Strohacker is an eco-political artist whose work emphasizes the non-human in an increasingly human-centric world. She received a BFA (2006) from The Ohio State University and an MFA (2011) from Arizona State University.
Strohacker’s co-creative and site-responsive practice routinely collaborates with both local and national wildlife conservation organizations to conceptualize animals who have been displaced by the colonial built environment, controlled by the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation, and erased by the anthropocentrism of capitalism.
Conceptually, Strohacker’s focus on wildlife and public space reflects larger contexts of ecology, politics, and radical interspecies municipalism.
“No longer the wild, “untrammeled” nature beloved by North American environmentalists, nature in the Anthropocene is always inflected by human actions, even when we don’t intend it. Even remote places where no human has ever set foot and deep layers of the world’s oceans are being transformed by climate change and ocean acidification, for example, whether we are individually aware of it or not. Strohacker’s works, with their sophisticated mix of attention to the real world of nature and attention to its many mediations and representations, are a brilliant gateway to these discussions about the futures of nature and humans as well as nonhumans’ places in those futures.”
Gallery Representation: Visions West Contemporary