Headlands Center for the Arts

Artist Statement

We met during an off-season art residency in Ustka, a coastal town on the Baltic Sea, on April Fool’s Day, 2017. What began as a chance encounter started an ongoing collaboration shaped by movement, and layered frames of belonging. We’ve since lived and worked in Poland, and the USA, eventually grounding ourselves between Oleśnica in Lower Silesia: a town scarred by shifting borders, and Chicago’s post-industrial landscape threaded with our families’ fragile stories.

Together, we are navigating immersion of Western and Eastern influences. Our collaborative practice is drawn to the tensions between environment, authority, and care. With roots in different places, we use art to question the invisible scaffolding of visible geopolitical power.

awalaszek.com

sam-stevens.com/

While At Headlands

While at Headlands, we will immerse ourselves in the natural environment, approaching it not as backdrop but as a landscape shaped by hegemonic forces. Focusing on non-native flora in the Marin Headlands—highly flammable French broom, soil-choking ice plant, and tree-smothering English ivy—we examine how environments are not only formed, but scripted. We use speculative storytelling to trace the histories of these botanical “outsiders” in our daily practice. Imagining alternative futures that unsettle dominant narratives and reconsider relationships between land, migration, and fire.