Institute of Queer Ecology (IQECO) is an ever-evolving collaborative organism producing interdisciplinary art as a tool of critical optimism and queer futurity in the face of vanishing “nature.”

IQECO was co-founded in 2017 by Lee Pivnik and Nicolas Baird. To date, the Institute of Queer Ecology has worked with over 125 different artists to present interdisciplinary programming that oscillates between curating programs and directly producing artworks. IQECO projects are grounded in the theoretical framework of Queer Ecology. This theoretical framework is an interdisciplinary approach to dismantling heteronormative and institutional discourse surrounding sexuality and nature. Queer Ecology also forges a pathway to reimagine environmental interconnectivity, politics, and evolution through a queer lens. The collective works to overturn the destructive human-centric hierarchies by imagining an equitable, multi-species future. The Institute of Queer Ecologies explores queer lives on both individual and collective levels. On an individual level, we understand change and transformation in intensely personal ways. On a collective level, the queer community is a space of eccentric economies and mutual support, of found families and utopian dreams, of care and connection and the net benefits species gift one another.

IQECO has presented projects with the Guggenheim Museum (New York, NY), the Institute of Contemporary Art (Miami, Florida), the Julia Stoschek Collection (Düsseldorf, Germany), the Medellín Museum of Modern Art (Medellín, Colombia), the Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade (Serbia), the Biennale of Sydney (Australia), Prairie (Chicago, IL), Bas Fisher Invitational (Miami, FL) Gas Gallery (Los Angeles, CA), and Vox Populi (Philadelphia, PA), among others.

UVP Commission Personnel:

Daniel Ayat

Nicolas Baird

Maya Bjornson

Dasychira (Adrian Martens)

Nadia Hannan

Juan Heilbron

Aimee Lin

Juan Luis Matos

Lee Pivnik

 

Read more about IQECO here: https://queerecology.org/

---