Erin Mallea is a multidisciplinary artist exploring microcosms as entry points into larger human and environmental conditions. Working across sculpture, video, photography and print publications, her work scrutinizes cultural relationships to land, place, and time.
Erin’s process is grounded in place-based research and partnerships with individuals, community groups and institutions outside of art spaces. She has worked with biologists, historians, neighbors, community radio, environmental justice activists and more to develop interactive projects, publications and time-based, gallery works. Erin’s work has explored specific contexts such as the internal struggle of a 19th c. utopian community to define itself (Maintaining Utopia, 2018), her grandmother’s attempt to understand and articulate family history (Monument to an Origin Story, 2018), land-use conflicts near her hometown (Refuge, 2019), and the industrial past and ecological transformation of a park beside her former studio (Tree News, Issue 2, 2022).
Erin has exhibited at galleries, museums and DIY spaces including the Laband Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Miller ICA, Pittsburgh, PA; A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, Boise Art Museum, Boise, ID; Melanie Flood Projects, Portland, OR and more. She has sent vibrations from a giant fungus throughout the atmosphere and currently produces Tree News, an experimental publication and event series. She received a MFA from Carnegie Mellon University (2019) and is an Assistant Professor of Art at the Pennsylvania State University School of Visual Art.