Join us for a fascinating exploration of earth-system processes, where water becomes light, light becomes sound, and sound becomes insight into the tropical forests of Columbia – far from our day-to-day world, but as close as Watershed Art & Ecology.

Viewing hours: Saturdays, 2pm to 7pm
Artist talk: May 10 at 5pm
Address: 1821 S Racine Ave, Chicago

Practices of Place
“We artists don’t create artworks. We invent practices.”
— Silvio Lang

With Practices of Place, Felipe Macia invites us into an evolving field of artistic inquiry where art becomes method, and method becomes a means of re-sensing the world. Rooted in the notion that artists invent practices—not objects—this exhibition proposes a set of sensitive protocols: ways of sensing, shaping, and inhabiting place through experimentation with time, body, material, memory, atmosphere and ecology.

Macia’s work is driven by the belief that artists hold the capacity to reform bodies, norms, and social structures. His projects are not representations of landscape, but invitations to co-create it—through practices that are spatial, climatic, scientific, sonic, somatic, and poetic. These series of research-intensive practices where art becomes a tool for subjective mutation and collective re-imagining—for the artist who transforms his own way of life, and for viewers who are pulled into a process of becoming. Communing with Silvio Lang’s invitation, this exhibition proposes a field of experimental geography—where time, memory, landscape, and climate are not just subjects of inquiry but active collaborators in the work.

The works in Practices of Place enact a return of embodied presences, a political ecology of things, and a regenerative pragmatics of the interweave—folding the political, pedagogical, and artistic into living material inquiry. Across all these works, Practices of Place makes a powerful claim: that art is not separate from the systems that sustain life—it is embedded in them, responsive to them, and capable of transforming them.

ARTIST’S BIO:

Felipe Macia navigates the intricate nexus of art, environment, and community engagement, employing various mediums such as documentary, video installation, light, and sound. With a background in regenerative design, environmental conservation, and community-based initiatives, Felipe approaches his work with an intuitive responsiveness to landscapes while remaining ethically attuned to the communities he collaborates with.

His short film “Verde Como el Oro” received the Rainforest Journalism Pulitzer Grant. This documentary shed light on a threatening mega mining project in Colombia, sparking a compelling campaign against environmental destruction. It was screened at renowned venues such as France 24, the Medellin Modern Art Museum, and the Environmental Film Festival Planet On, garnering international recognition and contributing to meaningful conversations about environmental activism.

In 2023, his piece “Architectural Kinetics” was featured in the winter season program at Art on the Mart in Chicago. Furthermore, the community-based project, La Leona Rural Public School, which challenges traditional design principles for rural schools in Colombia, was nominated for The Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize 2024 at the Illinois Institute of Technology. His video installation “Voz de la Tierra” was presented in the Museum of Modern Art of Bogota, offering an immersive exploration of a portrait on environmental justice.

Macia completed an MFA in Film, Video, Animation, and New Media at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a bachelor’s in Business and Sustainability at the University of Queensland in Australia.

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Tags: Chicago, Felipe Macia, Felipe Macia: Practices of Place, Lower West Side, Watershed Art & Ecology