Letha Wilson

In my work the ability of a photograph to transport the viewer is both called upon, and questioned; sculptural interventions attempt to compensate for the photograph’s failure to encompass the physical site it represents. Landscape photography as a genre is approached with equal parts reverence and skepticism. These pieces call to share in a view of our surrounding natural environments; specific moments chosen from the natural world held in a tenuous balance alongside our constructed everyday. The photographs in my work have been taken myself over the last twenty years, often from travels in the American West. The hands-on relationship I have developed with photography allows me to further push its potential as sculptural material. My studio practice has a strong emphasis on material experimentation, where tests and trials lead to discoveries, and unexpected results. Often times my work is created in response to a particular environment or context, often the gallery architecture, or an outdoor setting.

Letha Wilson is known for combining photography with industrial materials like concrete and steel. Wilson cuts, tears and shapes her photographs, pushing and pulling the prints into place and then encases portions of the composition in cement. She explores the magnetic pull of the American West, alluding to landscape’s intrinsic role in our own myths of reinvention, endless possibility, and inevitable promise. Using architecture and three-dimensionality as both frame and armature, Wilson reclaims the photographic image, exploring the medium’s inability to encompass the site it represents. Letha was born in Hawaii, raised in Colorado, and currently works in Craryville and Brooklyn, New York. She earned her BFA from Syracuse University, and a MFA from Hunter College. Residencies include Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, MacDowell, Yaddo, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, and the Headlands Center for the Arts, among others. Wilson has exhibited at MASS MoCA, DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, International Center for Photography, Essl Museum (Vienna), Bronx Museum of the Arts, Socrates Sculpture Park, ARKO Art Center (Seoul) and the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art. In both 2019 and 2014 Letha was awarded a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Photography.