Queer Data Ecologies
Intersecting Data, Identity, and Environment
Activities: Exhibition Design and Curation
Year: 2025
Queer Data Ecologies: an exhibition at the Public Art Futures Lab in Downtown Atlanta, brought together works from five local researchers and artists to think through how experiences of queerness and disability intersect with local landscapes and ecological data at a time of environmental crisis. Together, the works address how hope, concern, and non-human others can commingle, as we collectively navigate the murky spaces between environmental preservation and degradation.
Featuring Sylvia Janicki, Eve Brown, Heidi Biggs, Catherine Wieczorek, and curator, Alexandra (Allie) Teixeira Riggs at the Public Art Futures Lab.
This exhibition was supported by Atlanta Interdisciplinary AI Network, an intentionally interdisciplinary network of Atlanta-based researchers investigating how to enlist AI ethically, equitably, and in the service of justice.
Show Statement
situating our exhibition
Queer Data Ecologies are heterogenous composites of data that speak not only to situated, local landscapes but also to assemblages of tangible, embodied experiences of queerness and disability. In this exhibition, we create these Queer Data Ecologies by bringing together patchwork perspectives informed by our own personal experiences and local landscapes. These works invite alternative interpretations of environmental data, land histories, and felt experiences of a changing climate. We present pieces that blur body-environment boundaries, challenging the distinction between environmental data and biodata; prompt reflections on the unequal body burdens and structures of power in embodied experiences of pollution; and entangle climate data with felt experiences that reflect on how extreme heat and climate change are experienced inequitably. Our works also reflect on place-based mythologies and how technologies, data practices, and narratives shape our understanding of ecological and cultural histories. Together, we present works that center experiences of queerness and disability to think through how hope, concern, and more-than-human agencies can commingle, as we collectively navigate the murky spaces between environmental preservation and degradation.
In Queer Data Ecologies, we think through how experiences of queerness and disability intersect with local landscapes and ecological data at a time of environmental crisis.
Queer/Crip approaches
leveraging lenses of queerness and disability
To express queer and disability perspectives, we draw from queer/crip theories. Crip theory confronts ableist societal norms, emphasizing the value of diverse lived experiences of illness and disability. Queer theory challenges binaries and normative structures to embrace fluidity, messy abundances and radical cooperation. Together, queer/crip theories critique dominant narratives that marginalize non-normative bodies and experiences to foreground alternative ways of being and feeling.
Design and planning
setting up the show
A lot of upfront design and planning went into the show. I brought together our coalition, started drafting up a description of the show, the title, and creating marketing materials — both for print and online. I also wrote a grant to fund the exhibition through the Atlanta Interdisciplinary Artificial Intelligence Network. Once planning was fully underway, we started approving logos and marketing materials with Fulton County. Next, I started drawing up a curatorial diagram based on the dimensions of the gallery, the available tech and space, and affinities between artworks and collaborators. Once we all approved this diagram, we could move forward with the show’s installation.
Images of print and digital marketing materials, installation diagram, and title cards for individual works.
An installation view of our cohort setting up the exhibition.
We also created physical zines to accompany each of our pieces in the exhibition. For the opening, we placed all of our physical and printed materials on a zine library / reading table in the center for folks to sit and peruse during the show. We also placed zines alongside pieces in small zine holders to accompany the videos.
Installation view showing (left to right): Catherine Wieczorek's Seam(less) Histories (2025) and (Un)Balances: Entangled Destinies (2025); Heidi Biggs's Soft Sound Geographies: Textile Maps of Land Body Data Entanglements (2025), and Eve Brown's Pleasure Pumps and Dynamic Life Structures (2025).
Installation view showing Sylvia Janicki's Ray Flats (2025) and my Generating Queer Histories (2025) and Mold Sounds (2024).
Installation view showing Sylvia Janicki's Sents-ing Mask (2025), which speculatively visualizes toxic particles accumulating in the body using a Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) sensor.
Installation view of Heidi Biggs's High Water Pants (2018-19), which physicalizes GPS data from future sea level increases on a pair of biking pants. Also shown are Heidi Biggs's Water Dreaming video (2025) and Eve Brown's Couch Potato (2025).
Installation view showing my Generating Queer Histories (2025) and Mold Sounds (2024). Also in view are Eve Brown's Couch Potato (2025) and Catherine Wieczorek's Grid(a) Temporali: Tracing More-Than-Human Ecologies (2025) and Seam(less) Histories (2025).
Thematic Intersections
reflecting on connections in our work
Traversal and Movement: Each of our pieces relates to traversal—of land, of space, of datasets, of histories; as well as to movement—through feet, hands, bodies, bikes, ships, and even particulates or molds. Through some form of movement and traversal, we’re both theoretically and materially positioning our bodies within environments as opposed to outside of them, and through the acts of moving across landscapes, we’re asking viewers join us in these felt, embodied experiences
Embodiment and Performance: Our works speak to embodied, performance-based methods and ways of working. Similarly, queer theory draws from performativity, for instance with regards to gender, and our works extend this concept of performativity and performance into ecologies.
Alternative Engagements with Data: We’re each engaging with data in alternative ways — experiencing data at alternative scales, through alternative lenses, or different orientations. In a sense, each of the pieces imagines relationships to data that are queer, that see bodies and environments as interconnected rather than disparate entities, and that attune to the glitches and messiness inherent in data work, rather than neat, discrete, and categorized entries.
Situated Materials and Processes: There is such a variety of materials / processes in this show, and through these, we’re each engaging with particular, local contexts. For instance, in Generating Queer Histories, each vignette enacts a particular material process pertaining to the critique.
Alternative Temporalities: Experiencing time alternatively or queerly in varied ways. For instance, engaging slowness in embroidery or urgency in a time lapse.
Allie Teixeira Riggs
Allie Teixeira Riggs
Allie Teixeira Riggs
Design Researcher and Product Designer
Design Researcher and Product Designer
Design Researcher and Product Designer
Design Researcher and Product Designer