Artist Biography
Mollie McKinley is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice works with non-human intelligences of the elements. She works with media such as photography, light, glass, and sculpture to materialize the ethereal and visceral aspects of nature consciousness. McKinley’s work has been shown at The Contemporary Jewish Museum San Francisco, NADA Foreland, Turley Gallery, Fridman Gallery, Pioneer Works, UrbanGlass, Independent Curators International, The Samuel Dorsky Museum at SUNY New Paltz, The Museum of Arts and Design, Anthology Film Archives, and many others. McKinley holds a BA in photography from Bard College, and an MFA in sculpture/dimensional studies from Alfred University. Her critical writing on art and arts education can be found in Museum Teen Programs How-To Kit, published by the Walker Art Center in collaboration with the Dia Art Foundation (2023); Emergency Index Vol. 10+ (2023) and in Peer Review Vol. 3 (2025). McKinley is based in the Hudson Valley of New York, and works as a photographer and educator at the Dia Art Foundation.
All content on this site is copyright Mollie McKinley 2010-2025
Land Acknowledgement
Much of my work is made in collaboration with the lands of the Hudson Valley and Catskill Mountains. These landscapes are traditional territories of the Lenni-Lenape people, a land called “Lenapehoking.” I acknowledge the Lenni-Lenape as the original people of this land, and their continuing relationship with their territory. In the continued presence of Lenape people in their homeland, I affirm the aspiration of the great Lenape Chief Tamanend: that there be harmony between the indigenous people of this land and the descendants of the immigrants to this land, “as long as the rivers and creeks flow, and the sun, moon, and stars shine.”
I’d also like to acknowledge and honor the role of traditional Haudenosaunee lands and its people, known as the Keepers of the Western Door, where I developed my work in relationship to that landscape during 2020-2022.