Mary Ellen Strom

Mary Ellen Strom is a U.S.-based artist known for temporary public artworks and video/performance installations. Born in Butte, Montana, a hard rock mining town in the Rocky Mountain West, her research-based artwork is influenced by the culture and environment of this complex region. Strom’s artworks about place study the impacts of settler colonialism, extraction, and human-induced climate change. Projects are researched and produced in collaboration with Indigenous scholars, scientists, historians, environmentalists, and policymakers and have been exhibited on farms, cattle ranches, public pools, rivers, trains, grain terminals, and horse arenas in galleries and museums. She co-founded the public art organization Mountain Time Arts in Southwestern, MT, and is a Professor of Media Arts at Tufts University, Boston.

SINK OR SING is a series of public performances sited at locations vulnerable to coastal flooding, The central strategy features a local choir, perched on a platform on a body of water, performing a movement/vocal work while slowly sinking beneath the surface then re-emerging transformed. SINK OR SING seeks to embrace, reflect, and bear witness to the process of a communities’ coming to grips with the challenges and hopes of living on our ever-changing earth.