Artist Statement/ Biography

Heather Renée Russ (she/they) works across photography, installation and bio-art. They blend organic marine materials with queer femme signifiers, like wig hair and false eyelashes. Their work engages with themes of displacement while celebrating the vibrant communities queers have historically created in cities by the sea. They utilize scanner photography to create detailed imagery incorporating glitch. They also build live algae bioreactors in femme signifying vessels that take in carbon and produce oxygen. Russ’s work is influenced by queer ecology and speaks to the fragmentation many queers feel as spaces of gathering, including queer beaches, are under threat from climate change and gentrification. Russ’s work draws from a rich history of stewarding underground queer art spaces.

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Heather Renée Russ exhibited at NADA Miami with Paradice Palase during Miami Art Week 2023. She also participated in SPRING/BREAK Art Show NYC in 2023 She has shown at SomoS in Berlin, IMT Gallery in London and Satellite Art Fair in Miami. In New York, she has also shown at Flux Factory, ChaShaMa and with Paradice Palase at the Other Art Fair. She has completed residencies at MASS MoCA, ChaShaMa North, Vermont Studio Center, and TransBorder Art on Governors Island. Russ will show with NYC-based apexart in spring 2024. Russ comes from a history of stewarding queer spaces. She co-produced Club Feral, a raucous queer nightclub in San Francisco and the collaborative space in Brooklyn known as Lair Fera. < BACK