Statement from the Artist:

As ‘One-of-Many,’ a being who walks through public spaces, roaming along rivers and streets, spirit-like in a frosty, ghostly-white cloud of bobbling tumbleweeds –that omen of drought from the Dust Bowl Era, and now of extreme climate drought, I invite YOU to engage in community and social transformation. With the imperative of climate emergency and the cultural amnesia that prevents all of us from fully grasping the cultural power of our magnetic visual presence, gather fallen branches, grasses or tumbleweed, stitch or wire them onto a sturdy cloth with an opening for your head, or onto an existing garment (coat, jeans, poncho shape cloth, gown, tuxedo, etc.) with optional arm sock or mask over face. Adorned, walk along your streets, rivers, and byways, alone or in groups, in silence or in song, –becoming ever-present as climate consciousness.

I am only ‘One-of-Many’ anticipating “You-the-Many” worldwide. Climate change takes everyone.

IG @ahnirocheleau; annerocheleau.com

Ahní Rocheleau

Ahní Rocheleau (descendant: Huron-Wendat Nation/French) teaches studio arts and public space design at IAIA. She works in installation, performance art, object sculpture, painting, and curating at the intersection of human and ecosystem relationships, community transformation, and racism. Rocheleau’s art and curatorial projects derive from how cultural memory directs society, suppressing our human connection to earth and imaginative responses to the mainstream narrative. Rocheleau earned her MFA in Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design. Awards include: Andy Warhol Fulcrum Grant as founder of Confluence Collective; two Rhode Island State Council on the Arts grants; four International Convergence Festival public art commissions; International Sculpture Conference public art commission; City of Bogota site-specific commission; DeWitt-Wallace Reader’s Digest Foundation Fellowship; Walter Hopps (Menil Collection) Recognition of Merit; and several artist residencies, including UCross Foundation. Ahní has exhibited nationally and internationally from Boston, California, and New York City, to Barcelona, Colombia, and Germany.