Heather Renée Russ

We traditionally think of trees as producing oxygen, but it’s algae–the undervalued, mucosal, oxygen producer creating over half the air we breathe. I feel kinship to algae providing this often overlooked ecosystem service–likening this to hidden femme labor. I grow 4 different types of live microalgae. I build bioreactors to sustain them, often using repurposed vessels such as vintage high heel decanters and perfume bottles. These bioreactors absorb carbon and produce oxygen for us to breathe, while cleaning the air.

The video depicts queer artists and activists frolicking with wigs and sometimes struggling to stay upright in the tide on Riis Beach, a queer and BIPOC beach in NYC. It is projected through a tank containing saltwater, causing the light to refract and rainbow and the image to split into three color channels. The sound is made from gritty recordings captured of waves underneath the sand and a ship’s distress signal-meant to forewarn of something unknown that is to come.

The sculpture is made from wig hair from the video shoot left in the tide to attract detritus. It picked up bits of shell, fish bones and a bracelet.

Tidewrack refers to the evolving space on the shoreline where the mixture of seaweed and synthetic materials are deposited by a receding tideline. This creative tangle may survive—churned and changed—or be decimated and swept out to sea. The tidewrack is temporary, collaborative and evolving. I make this work while contemplating what it’s like to create and hold space together in celebration while simultaneously holding anxiety for the next displacement.

In this work I attached ropes and buoys to wigs and sex toys and placed them in the sea on an oysterfarm to attract seaweed and sea creatures. I photographed the changes. I explored the kinship I feel with macroalgaes and bivalves and drew correlations between the labor they provide by mitigating nitrogen to the labor so many in my queer community put towards working for social change.

The photographs are archival pigment prints on cotton rag in editions of 3.

I started working with false eyelashes, synthetic hair and seawater to work through my grief following the Pulse Nightclub Shooting and the Ghost Ship Fire, a fire that took the lives of 36 people in an artist space in the Bay Area community I came of age in. Inspired by that which brought comfort—queer femme signifiers and seagrass —eyelashes and hair are submerged in a tank suspended by touch. They migrate, form new connections and grow algae. The tank is mounted on fire resistant cinder blocks.

I’ve installed the tank in exhibitions and photographed the changes. Eyelash Grass was installed as part of "A Dark Rock Surged Upon" curated by Faheem Haider at Garner Arts Center in New York.

Also pictured: "Panic Room: A Safe Space for Reflection on the Value of Black Lives" by Tiffany Smith.

The detail photographs were taken after 6 months of algae growth. The water receded leaving behind sculptural forms. They are 16x24” archival pigment prints on cotton rag in editions of 3.