Paths of Desire

In her first museum exhibition in the United States, Irish artist Katie Holten joins the Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis, as an artist-in-residence to create her largest and most ambitious work to date. The exhibition presents a new site-specific indoor installation comprised of sculpture, drawings and paintings and an outdoor performance that collectively explore global ecology and social gestures within moments of environmental crisis. Interested in our fragile ecology from an international perspective--while also considering local concerns--Holten's work is a relative, aesthetic proposition for community-friendly solutions. She renders nature essential, and in the process asks individuals and communities to ponder their natural environment, and to consider human fragility in an uncertain future. Holten collaborates with communities around the globe to raise awareness of environmental issues through a visual consideration of nature. Her exhibitions heighten a sense of urgency and action through beautifully rendered work that expresses the fragile ecology of local environments.