maggie-rose condit-summerson: nymphaea
artist info & virtual world themes
maggie-rose condit-summerson (she/they) is a feminist/queer artist/educator and a dual-title Ph.D. candidate in Art Education and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Penn State University.
Maggie-Rose earned an MFA in Visual Studies from Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon, and her interdisciplinary practice incorporates time-based media, performance, and found objects to investigate the sticky relationships between queer embodiment, femininity, the marketplace, and digital/visual culture.
The virtual world invites encounters with Condit-Summerson’s explorations of queer ecologies, compulsory heterosexuality, the heteronormative male gaze and loving/caring kinships and partnerships.
contact: maggiecondit@gmail.com
how to explore the virtual worlds:
Currently, the virtual worlds are most compatible with Chrome and Firefox browsers (the interactive elements may not work with Safari). The worlds are also only compatible with desktop/laptop devices currently.
Navigate the environments using the W, A, S, D keys (to move forward, left, back, and right, respectively). Use the mouse to turn and look around/up and down (like the navigation of a PC game).
Press the escape key to move your mouse outside
of the environment window.
Each virtual world contains audio elements.
To activate the artist audio stories and caption videos, “walk” up to the pink exhibition icons, and the audio/visual content will begin.
You can pause the interactive content by moving away from the area, then return and resume.
participatory prompts
How are normative ideas about sex, sexuality, gender, and reproduction projected onto “nature?”
What does it mean to “queer” understandings of nature?
What might a multi-species model of reproductive justice entail?
Besides water lilies, are there additional examples of plants, animals, or other life forms that might teach humans lessons about collective survival?
Share your ideas on the exhibition Discord or with friends.
recommended readings & resources
Catriona Sandilands, “Queer Ecology” in Keywords for Environmental Studies (2016)
Prudence Gibson & Monica Gagliano, The Feminist Plant: Changing Relations with the Water Lily (2017)
Anna Tsing, Unruly Edges: Mushrooms as Companion Species: For Donna Haraway (2012)
Laura Jímenez, Kierra Johnson, & Cara Page, “Beyond the Trees: Stories and Strategies of Environmental and Reproductive Justice” in Radical Reproductive Justice (2017)
Sonia Boyce, Our removal of Waterhouse’s naked nymphs painting was art in action (2018)
Audre Lorde, Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power (1978)
Sophie Lewis, Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family (2019)
