How to Grow the Cowpea: Survival Strategies from the U.S. South
Heather Bird Harris, Water Film (Summer, Georgia), 2025. Wet cyanotype on canvas, indigo, and clay watercolor paints over film still on stretched paper sealed with beeswax. Courtesy of the artist.
Opening Reception:
Fri., Sep. 4, 5–8 p.m.
How to Grow the Cowpea: Survival Strategies from the U.S. South is an exhibition presented in partnership with Planet Texas 2050, an initiative supporting interdisciplinary climate resilience research at the University of Texas at Austin. The exhibition assembles new and existing works by artists who probe our relationship with the environment and offer strategies for survival amid the climate crisis. To engage a crisis of this scale, the participating artists operate on a timeline that extends far beyond the exhibition’s immediate scope. Their work builds on legacies of scientific, artistic, and ecological practices that have been in process long before the exhibition, planting seeds for material transformations that will take shape long after the exhibition closes, in forms ranging from heat-resistant gardens to advocacy for the rematriation of the American bison.
The exhibition borrows its principal title from an educational pamphlet written by George Washington Carver during his tenure at Tuskegee University. Designed for Black farmers in rural Alabama, the pamphlet offered a holistic blueprint for communal care, pairing research on soil health and nutrition with hands-on applications such as financial literacy, agricultural sustainability, and material resourcefulness. Carver’s educational model, which prioritizes accessibility and interdisciplinary methods, directly informs the exhibition’s approach to addressing the immense, disorienting scale of the climate crisis through public pedagogy and the presentation of applied artistic practices.
How to Grow the Cowpea is supported by scientific data collected and shared by the Planet Texas 2050 network, which brings together academic researchers and scientists from diverse fields to develop strategies for equitably adapting to and mitigating the cascading threats of ecological disaster. The exhibition’s co-curators commissioned several artists to create new work in dialogue with Planet Texas 2050 researchers, including scientists who build communication systems for communities in vulnerable floodplains, reconstruct Texas’ paleoclimate, and track how climate change alters bird migration patterns. Across the exhibition, its public programs, and its catalog, How to Grow the Cowpea explores collaborative methodologies to provide accessible, actionable strategies for mutual and environmental care.
Participating artists include Saif Azzuz, Imani Jacqueline Brown, George Washington Carver, Mel Chin, ENTRE Film Center, Heather Bird Harris, Angel Lartigue, Marie Lorenz, Anna Mayer, Mark Menjívar, Kate Newby, Sahara Dust Season Collective (Anthony Almendarez, Mashal Awais, Sol Diaz-Peña, larí garcía, Jeremy Johnson, Khristián Méndez Aguirre, Jack Morillo, Corey De’Juan Sherrard Jr., Paty Lorena Solórzano), Pallavi Sen, jackie sumell, Cecilia Vicuña, and Obie Weathers.
Participating researchers include Patrick Bixler, Daniel Breecker, Nancy Carlson, Andrea Contina, Evan Farese, Maggie Hansen, Tim Keitt, Rodrigo Leal, Katherine Lieberknecht, Paola Passalacqua, Adam Rabinowitz, Miriam Solis, and the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, among others, with advisory support from Heidi Schmalbach and Jonathan Lowell.
How to Grow the Cowpea: Survival Strategies from the U.S. South is curated by VAC Associate Curator Melissa Fandos and Erika Mei Chua Holum, Curator at The Dock Art Centre in Co. Leitrim, Ireland.
Generous support for How to Grow the Cowpea: Survival Strategies from the U.S. South is provided by Planet Texas 2050, the Every Page Foundation, the Green Fund, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
