ARTIST 003 SEASON 5

Lee Pivnik

Lee Pivnik (b. 1995) lives in Miami, Florida. He works across mediums, often returning to sculpture, video, and social practice. His artwork takes inspiration from living systems and other species to imagine a future that is based on mutualistic relationships instead of extractive economies. Permeating his practice is the idea of entanglement—the touching, changing, mutating relationships between species and landscapes. It is through these intimacies that worlds arise—worlds of decay and degradation, or verdant flourishing. Lee’s drawings, sculptures, and installations share this relational quality, referencing fungal networks, epiphytic plants, and emergent animal architectures that inhabit South Florida.

He co-directs the Institute of Queer Ecology, an ever-evolving collaborative organism that brings peripheral solutions to environmental degradation to the forefront of public consciousness. IQECO projects are interdisciplinary, but grounded in the theoretical framework of queer ecology, a tool for understanding ourselves, our environments, our biologies, and our collaborations through queer lenses.

In 2022, Lee began a long term project called Symbiotic House, which reimagines the home as a potential site for climate care. Symbiotic House will grow into a nature and culture learning center to inspire local transformation towards regenerative design. The project spawns from a personal desire to continue dwelling in a climate precarious city, through crafting ecological reciprocity.

Lee graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in Sculpture and a concentration in Nature-Culture-Sustainability Studies, and in 2022 he attended the Immersion Program at The School of Architecture (TSOA) at Arcosanti. In 2017, Artspace named Pivnik one of “9 Artists Changing the Way We Think About the Environment”. He has been awarded Knight Arts Challenge Awards in 2019 and 2021, and an Ellie from Oolite Arts (2020). Lee has been an artist in residence at Biosphere 2 (2017), Mana Contemporary Miami (2018), Atlantic Center for the Arts (2021), and Deering Estate (2022).

To date, the Institute of Queer Ecology has worked with over 120 different artists to present interdisciplinary programming that oscillates between curating exhibitions and directly producing artworks/projects. IQECO has presented projects with the Guggenheim Museum (New York, NY), the Institute of Contemporary Art (Miami, Florida), the Julia Stoschek Collection (Düsseldorf, Germany), the Medellín Museum of Modern Art (Medellín, Colombia), the Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade (Serbia), ASAKUSA (Tokyo, Japan), the Biennale of Sydney (Australia), Prairie (Chicago, IL), Bas Fisher Invitational (Miami, FL), Gas Gallery (Los Angeles, CA), and Vox Populi (Philadelphia, PA), among others.

Learn more about Lee on his website here.