About Us

Artists on Expedition is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded in 2022 by artists, expedition leaders, Indigenous people, conservationists, educators, and policy specialists. We are choreographing and implementing an avant-garde approach to address humanity’s inadequate actions to the pressing existential threats of extreme climate change and ecological degradation. We are on a mission to facilitate the creation and distribution of a new form of impact art from the frontlines of a planet in peril; from our highly productive, precious natural ecosystems, our Epic Ecosystems.  

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Impact art is created through a series of artists-on-expedition programs by transdisciplinary teams of artists working in collaboration with regional scientists, Indigenous peoples and other stakeholders. Our artists-on-expedition programs are modeled on traditional artist-in-residences, which provide individuals the opportunity to work outside of their typical studios, residing at a specific location for a given period of time. What distinguishes artists-on-expedition programs are the collaborative, transdisciplinary expedition teams participating on journeys through our Epic Ecosystems to create purposely driven, mission-oriented impact art. 

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The expedition format extends from and addresses the practical realities of our planetary crisis, Artists on Expedition’s foundational ethos. The complexity of extreme climate change and scale of current ecological degradation are overwhelming and alienating. Bearing witness to multiple sites and systems first-hand while on expedition allows for a more intimate and empathetic understanding in the creative mind. This benefit grows by operating within a transdisciplinary network that allows artists to realize a holistic conception of their subjects. The combination of these encounters will be the basis of a more informed and profound impact art that is equal parts collectively urgent and individually human. 

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This solution also engages with what Artist on Expedition recognizes as art’s indispensable role in reversing our current state of inaction. Science records vast and exact measurements previously unthinkable. But despite such concrete data, scientific findings are received as abstractions. This is because science enlightens through objectivity and the loss of the individual. It is a necessary quality, but one that drains its discoveries of the immediate and the visceral. Similarly, politics operates in short-term cycles that seek to maintain the status quo. It is poor at anticipating and adapting to even the most precisely forecasted changes. Art bridges these divides. Art has the capacity to make scientific knowledge coherent and apprehensible while maintaining a connection to the individual. Art has the visionary capacity to take from the present and refashion it into a future potential. 

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We are convinced that an art of holistic creative vision and enhanced consciousness will invigorate humanity and initiate the urgent systematic transformations so desperately needed.