CV 

Katie Holten is an artist, activist and bestselling author. In 2003, she represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale. She has had solo exhibitions at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Nevada Museum of Art, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, and Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane. Her work investigates the entangled relationships between humans and the natural world. She has created Tree Alphabets, a Stone Alphabet, and a Wildflower Alphabet to share the joy she finds in her love of the more-than-human world. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Irish Times, The Washington Post, Artforum, and frieze. She is a visiting lecturer at the New School of the Anthropocene. If she could be a tree, she would be an Oak.

What is the language we need to live right now?

How can we learn to be better lovers of the world?

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Katie Holten is an artist and activist based in New York City and Ardee, Ireland. 

Holten grew up in rural Ireland and studied at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, the Hochschule der Kunst in Berlin, Cornell University in New York and the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico.

For over twenty years she has made unconventional works that intersect art, activism, ecology, language and history. At the root of her practice is a commitment to fighting the climate and biodiversity emergency. Her collaborative research based work expores the inextricable relationship between Humans and Nature, between organic systems and human-made systems.

In 2003, Holten represented Ireland at the 50th Venice Biennale with a solo pavilion presentation entitled Laboratorio della Vigna. She has had solo exhibitions at VISUAL Carlow, Ireland (2020), the New Orleans Museum of Art in New Orleans (2012), Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane in Dublin (2010), The Bronx Museum of the Arts in New York (2009); Villa Merkel in Esslingen (2008), Nevada Museum of Art in Reno (2008) and the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (2007).

Holten has conceived major public commissions including TREE MUSEUM (2009-2010) for New York City’s Grand Concourse commissioned by the NYC Parks Department, the Bronx Museum and Wave Hill.

Since 2014 Holten has hosted monthly Sunday Salons in her home for a community of artists, scientists, writers, philosophers and engaged citizens to explore the possibilities for Art and Activism in the Anthropocene.

Several years ago, recognizing a looming crisis of representation as our species adapts to life in the Anthropocene, Holten created a Tree Alphabet and published the book ABOUT TREES, offering readers a language beyond the Human.

Holten is a MacDowell Fellow and recipient of numerous Grants and Fellowships, including a Fulbright Scholarship, Pollock Krasner Award, and multiple Bursaries from the Arts Council of Ireland.

While a Fellow of the Arts & Humanities at the NYC Urban Field Station she created a New York City Tree Alphabet with the NYC Parks Department and the US Forest Service.

In 2018 she co-founded Friends of Ardee Bog. The community group received government funding through a Peatland Community Engagement Scheme (2022) to undertake an ecological survey of Ardee bog.

During lockdown, Holten made an Irish Tree Alphabet (2020) to explore language ecosystems and the importance of our words and the stories that we share.

She is currently translating ULYSSES by James Joyce into Irish Trees to celebrate the 100th anniversary of its publication.

Katie Holten’s book The Language of Trees was published by Tin House in April 2023 and was an instant indie bestseller. It was published in Ireland and the UK by Elliott & Thompson and was an instant Irish Times bestseller. 

What is the language we need to live right now? How can we learn to be better lovers of the world?