Biography
Cristina Molina is a visual artist who hails from the subtropics of Miami and currently lives and works in New Orleans-two precarious terrains that have thematically influenced her practice. Spanning performance, video installation, photography, and textile design, Molina's artwork is set amongst vulnerable landscapes both real, and imagined. Using the language of magical realism, her artworks reshape and centralize little-known narratives to upend dominant histories. Molina's projects have been supported by the National Association for Latino Arts and Culture, The Foundation for Contemporary Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. Last year, Molina was one of 61 artists selected for the national exhibition State of the Art 2020 at Crystal Bridges Museum. Previously, her work has been featured at the New Orleans Museum of Art, Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans, The Ogden Museum of Southern Art, The Polk Museum, New Orleans Film Festival, and Syros International Film Festival. Cristina Molina is Associate Professor and Gallery Director at Southeastern Louisiana University where she received the 2018 President's Award for Excellence in Artistic Activity and is the current recipient of the Viola Brown Endowed Professorship in Visual Arts and Dramatic Arts.
Research
Neverglades tells the unknown history of ecofeminist activists who fought to preserve territories such as the Louisiana Wetlands and the South Florida Everglades; one of the largest wetland landscapes in the United States from which Florida derives one third of its drinking water and which serves as a crucial barrier against coastal flooding.
Neverglades works to unveil histories and embrace an ecofeminist approach to our current climate crisis by rebuilding narratives from a historical and environmental context. Through a series of photographs, oral history maps, and immersive audio/ video installations Neverglades draws connections between the two wetland territories the artist calls home, South Florida and Southeastern Louisiana, which share not only environmental likeness, but also the same urgent threat from climate change.
