Artist Researchers Volume. 2
Unseen California’s second cohort of artist researchers are working under the theme “Photography, Place, and Environment.” This Artist-in-Residence program aims to deepen an artist's way of knowing the shifting California landscape. The curatorial vision for Unseen California AIR 2024-2026 invites artists to propose new epistemologies and ways of belonging. Our current AIR program is sponsored in partnership with UCSC’s Kenneth S. Norris Center for Natural History.
Shao-Feng Hsu has been awarded a residency in our Artist-in-Research program to develop his project, Where Land and Ocean Meet. This body of work explores the complex interplay between coastal environments, human history, and the ecosystems that thrive where tides rise and fall.
Deeply influenced by his upbringing in Taiwan’s coastal landscapes and his military service on the Kinmen Islands, Hsu’s artistry bridges personal narrative with environmental exploration. By blending photography, research, and immersive encounters with water, he delves into themes of climate change, migration, and humanity’s shifting relationships with natural boundaries. Water, for Hsu, is more than an element—it’s a carrier of geological histories and cultural memory.
During the Unseen California residency, Hsu will collaborate with the UC Natural Reserve System and Bodega Marine Reserve (BMR), where land, sea, and human influences converge. This site provides an ideal setting for his interdisciplinary practice, which combines oceanographic research, photographic experimentation, and direct engagement with coastal environments. Hsu will document seasonal shifts in the landscape, studying changes in kelp forests, estuarine habitats, and coastal upwelling to offer a nuanced perspective on Northern California’s marine biodiversity and coastal dynamics.
Over the course of the two-year residency, Hsu will also partner with students, researchers, and local communities at both BMR and the Norris Center for Natural History to foster collaborative exploration of art, science, and the environment. Through workshops and community dialogues, he will inspire participants to reflect on their connections to nature and water, encouraging new perspectives on the thresholds between land and sea.
Hsu’s residency will culminate in a multi-sensory installation and an artist book, presenting a powerful reimagining of coastal ecosystems and their cultural, ecological, and historical significance. His work promises to ignite curiosity, spark dialogue, and deepen our collective understanding of life’s ever-shifting boundaries.
Lacey Lennon is the recipient of our Artist- in-Research Program award for her project, Fire College (working title). This compelling body of work investigates the transformative physical, mental, and emotional training of California’s firefighter cadets and their connection to the landscapes they strive to protect.
Combining documentary and performance-based photography, Lacey Lennon creates evocative and powerful imagery that explores themes of resilience, preparation, and the profound relationship between humans and fire-prone ecosystems. This body of work is deeply rooted in historical fire training visuals and contemporary methodologies, interweaving the ecological, urban, cultural, and social complexities of fire management.
During her residency, in partnership with the Norris Center of Natural History at UCSC, Lacey Lennon will engage with pivotal locations within the UC Natural Reserve System, sites integral to fire science and land stewardship. These sites host controlled burns and serve as a collaborative nexus for fire scientists, Indigenous practitioners, and land managers. Additionally, she will document the intensive training processes at two fire academies, immersing herself in the cadets’ experiences to create a deeply embodied and innovative visual narrative.
Lacey Lennon’s work aligns seamlessly with Unseen California’s and the Norris Center of Natural History’s shared mission: fostering a new phase in her practice, bridging a profound love for nature with a commitment to reimagining and interrogating humanity’s relationship with the environment.
Artist Researchers Volume. 1
In its inaugural cohort, Unseen California aims to “see” (by means of visualization and acknowledgement) the multivalent histories that compose the California landscape. This includes indigenous stewardship and regenerative practices – on ceded and unceded land – and the role of settler colonialism and imperialism in construction of these histories. Unseen California invites artists to engage in new types of creative ecology not yet considered/addressed in full within institutional spaces and the photographic canon of Western photography.
ASPEN MAYS
Artist Researcher
Aspen Mays was raised in Charleston, SC. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA in Anthropology and Spanish from The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. She is currently an Associate Professor and Chair of Photography at the California College of the Arts. She is represented by Higher Pictures Generation in New York, and recent honors include a 2021 Purchase Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Mays was also a Fulbright Scholar in Santiago, Chile, where she spent time with astrophysicists using the world’s most advanced telescopes to look at the sky, an experience that has made a lasting impact on her work.
Aspen Mays
Mercedes Dorame
Artist Researcher
Mercedes Dorame, born in Los Angeles, California, received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and her undergraduate degree from UCLA. She calls on her Tongva ancestry to engage the problematics of (in)visibility and ideas of cultural construction. Mercedes Dorame uses photography as a way to explore, reimagine, and connect to her Gabrielino-Tongva tribal culture and bring visibility to contemporary indigenous experience. The Tongva were the first people in what is now Los Angeles, and their territory covered the expanse from Malibu to San Bernardino to Aliso Creek. They have inhabited the Los Angeles basin for over eight thousand years and were officially recognized as an indigenous tribe by the state of California in 1994. Yet they still are not recognized federally, which means that as a collective group they have limited access to federal funding and no designated reservation land.
Mercedes Dorame
Tarrah Krajnak
Artist Researcher
Tarrah Krajnak is an artist working across photography, performance, and poetry. She was born in Lima, Peru in 1979, and currently lives in Los Angeles. Krajnak is an Associate Professsor of Art at UCLA. She is represented by Zander Galerie, Cologne. Krajnak is a 2024 Guggenheim Fellow, and was recently awarded the Jury Prize of the Louis Roederer Discovery Award at Les Rencontres d’Arles, the Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize from the Center for Documentary Studies, and the Hariban Grand Prize, from Benrido, Kyoto, Japan. Krajnak has published three books including El Jardín De Senderos Que Se Bifurcan (DAIS 2021), Master Rituals II: Weston's Nudes (TBW 2022) and RePose (FW Books 2023). Her work was featured in recent issues of Aperture, British Journal of Photography, The Eyes Journal, and European Photography. This past year Krajnak’s work was exhibited in Corps á Corps at Centre Pompidou, Paris, Photography Now at Victoria & Albert Museum, London, Aperture's traveling exhibition You Belong Here: People, Place, & Purpose in Latinx Photography, and in the solo exhibition Shadowings at the Huis Marseille Museum of Photography, Amsterdam. Krajnak’s work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Tate Modern, London, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, Centre Pompidou, Paris, The Pinault Collection, Paris, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, and The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC among others.
Tarrah Krajnak
Karolina Karlic
Artist Researcher
Through a range of photographic media Karlic creates work that ddresses the intersection of photography and documentary practices, with a focus on systems of labor and industry, globalization, and their impact on the social and environmental landscapes. Karlic has been the recipient of numerous fellowships, residencies, and awards, including the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. Her research is dedicated to telling the stories of those persons and ecologies who have been affected by the post-modernization of the industrial world. In her research, Rubberlands, a photographic survey that maps the ways natural rubber manufacturing is socially, ecologically and systemically formed, Karlic proposes that rubber + photography are both integral components of the second phase of the industrial revolution. This research proposes that each are equal players in the development of a globalized contemporary mobile society of making and consuming. Karlic is the founding director of Unseen California and Associate Professor at University of California, Santa Cruz, the Director of Graduate Studies of Environmental Art + Social Practice MFA Program and the Director of Art + Science initiatives at the Kenneth S. Norris Center for Natural History at UCSC.
Karolina Karlic
Dionne Lee
Artist Researcher
Dionne Lee works in photography, collage, and video to explore power, survival, and the conflicts that come with seeking a sense of belonging within the American landscape. Lee received an MFA at California College of the Arts in San Francisco in 2017. Lee’s work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, New Orleans Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, The Princeton University Art Museum, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA, Contemporary Art Gallery of Vancouver, CA, Aperture Foundation, New York, International Center of Photography, New York, Light Work, New York, and Florida State University’s Museum of Fine Arts, and most recently the Whitney Biennial 2024: Even Better Than the Real Thing, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Dionne Lee