Lee Pivnik (Studio 202)

Lee Pivnik is an artist living in Miami, Florida. Working across disciplines, he takes inspiration from living systems and other species to imagine a future based on mutualistic relationships instead of extractive economies. Permeating his practice is the idea of entanglement – the touching, changing, mutating relationships between species and landscapes. Through these intimacies, worlds arise —worlds of decay and degradation or verdant flourishing. His drawings, sculptures, and installations share this relational quality, referencing fungal networks, epiphytic plants, and emergent animal architectures that inhabit South Florida.

He co-directs the Institute of Queer Ecology (IQECO), an ever-evolving collaborative organism that brings peripheral solutions to environmental degradation to the forefront of public consciousness. IQECO projects are interdisciplinary but grounded in the theoretical framework of queer ecology, a tool for understanding ourselves, our environments, our biologies, and our collaborations through queer lenses.

In 2022, he began a long-term project called Symbiotic House, which reimagines the home as a potential site for climate care and adaptation. Symbiotic House will grow into a nature-culture learning center while enacting embodied mutualism as a design strategy. The project spawns from a personal desire to continue dwelling in a climate-precarious city through crafting ecological reciprocity.