MEREDITH KOOI
USA
portrait of Meredith Kooi
Work Statements
My recent practice has centered on healing—body, mind, and spirit, both ancestral and personal. Part of the work has required immersing my body in nature, asking the earth to facilitate my healing. In reconnecting to the earth, I tune into ki’s vibrations. (NOTE: I use the pronouns “ki/kin” instead of “it” in discussing non-human entities following Robin Wall Kimmerer, professor of Environmental and Forest Biology and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation.) The plants, animals, geology, atmosphere, and energy surrounding me speak, and I ask them/kin for guidance. Another part of the healing process encourages me, sometimes quite forcefully, to let go of deeply rooted and conditioned stories, patterns, thoughts, and behaviors. Absurdity and humor can aid in this difficult inner work. In the desert, it was finally time for me to part with a trash bag full of shredded checks I had been holding onto for years. Serving as a stage for movement, the bits of paper that once carried the potential of value are transformed into confetti.
Land Acknowledgment
These videos were both recorded on the ancestral lands of the Hohokam, Akimel O’odham (Upper Pima), Yavapai Apache, and O'odham Jeweḍ peoples, or what is now Scottsdale and Phoenix, Arizona, and edited on the ancestral lands of the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Núu-agha-tʉvʉ-pʉ̱ (Ute), and Očhéthi Šakówiŋ peoples, or what is now Erie, Colorado.
Bio
Meredith Kooi is an experimental artist, scholar, and educator whose site-responsive work uses video, performance, photography, sound, and writing to unveil the complexity of place. Driven by experience, Meredith’s process-based work actively integrates a myriad of knowledge- and sense-making practices to provide a holistic narrative of being. She has held artist residencies across the United States including Elsewhere, Wave Farm, PlySpace, and Hambidge, among others. As an educator, Meredith has taught a diversity of students including undergraduates, youths, and incarcerated adults in the classroom and as a workshop facilitator. She received her Ph.D. in the Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts from Emory University, her MA in Visual and Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and her BA in Environmental Studies from Denison University.
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