Heather Renée Russ (she/they) works across experimental photography, installation and bio-art. Her multidisciplinary practice incorporates queer femme signifiers and organic materials into works that engage with queer geographies, femme labor and climate grief. She has worked with Riis Beach as a site for a decade, a queer, trans and BIPOC beach in NYC under threat from climate change and development. Her newer works are about queer femme and trans artists growing botanicals on queer land projects to heal from cumulative stress while healing the planet.
Russ comes from a rich history of organizing in underground art scenes. She co-directed Lair Fera, a queer collaborative space in Brooklyn from 2016-2020. In San Francisco she co-produced Club Feral, a multi-gender queer femme-centered raucous art and dance space (2006-2009). She also co-founded Cutter Photozine, a queer and trans centered photography publication dedicated to queer people telling their own stores that was published between 2006-2009. She also served on the Board for MIX NYC, a queer experimental film festival. Stewarding spaces for queer artists in ever-shifting environments directly informs her work.
Russ showed at NADA Miami with Paradice Palase. She participated in SPRING/BREAK Art Show in NYC during Armory Week. She has also shown at Field Projects in NYC, SomoS in Berlin, IMT Gallery in London, Satellite Art Fair in Miami as well as apexart, Flux Factory, ChaShaMa and Ethan Cohen’s Kube in New York. She has completed residencies at NARS Foundation, MASS MoCA , Wassaic Project, ChaShaMa North, TransBorder Art on Governors Island and Vermont Studio Center.
Russ has upcoming solo exhibitions at NARS Foundation and State University New York (SUNY) Old Wesbbury at the Amanda Wallace Gallery Art Lab Institute for Social and Environmental Justice and will be included Solastalgia at Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum, at Cal State Long Beach
Heather Renée Russ lives and works in New York City and is part of the EFA Studio Program.
Studio shot of Heather Renée Russ at MASS MoCA residency 2022