Fulbright Scholar, Basia Irland, is an artist, author, and activist who creates international water projects. Through her work, Irland offers a creative understanding of water while examining how diverse communities of people, plants, animals, and other beings rely on this vital element. She is Professor Emerita, Department of Art, University of New Mexico, where she established the Art & Ecology program.
Her books include Water Library (University of New Mexico Press, 2007) and Reading the River: The Ecological Activist Art of Basia Irland (edited with Museum De Domijnen, 2017). These books focus on projects the artist has created over four decades in Africa, Canada, Europe, Mexico, Southeast Asia, and the United States.
In 2015-2016, Irland had a major retrospective exhibition at the Museum De Domijnen, the Netherlands, curated by Roel Arkesteijn. She has lectured globally and recently was the keynote speaker for an ecology conference at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Irland was invited by the United Nations in France to write a chapter about American rivers for a book to be published by UNESCO, and she is a Knowledge Network Expert for the United Nations’ Harmony with Nature platform. In 2021-2022, she represented the United States in the 15 Bienal de Cuenca, Cuenca, Ecuador, curated by Blanca de la Torre. Her projects have been featured in over 70 international publications.
Irland often works together with indigenous leaders and scholars from diverse disciplines. She has created large-scale international projects including, Waterborne Disease Scrolls; A Gathering of Waters, which fosters dialogue and connects communities along the entire length of rivers; and Ice Receding/Books Reseeding, hand-carved ephemeral Ice Books embedded with seed texts that are floated down streams to aid with riparian restoration. She has constructed rainwater harvesting systems and has produced documentaries about water. |
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