The Artist

1948 Detroit Michigan USA

Meridel Rubenstein as an artist has evolved from photographer of single photographic images to environmental artist of extended photographic works, multi-media installations, and social practice. Traveling away from home and studio frequently to photograph, research, and teach, most recently in Iraq, Singapore, and Sweden. Rubenstein is best known for her large-format photographs incorporating sculptures and unusual media, such as Monks in a Canoe from 2000-2001 in the collection of the Honolulu Museum of Art. This work consists of a dye transfer on glass and a found wooden dug-out canoe. Her photographic series, The Volcano Cycle, is a component of the larger project, Eden Turned on its Side.

The artist first came to Vietnam in 1995 and then made many subsequent trips. She photographed the oldest trees in America and the oldest trees in Vietnam, juxtaposing the photos with old and young people of both countries; the resulting body of work became part of the monograph containing work made over 4 decades. *Belonging Los Alamos to Vietnam, photo works 1980-2000* (St. Ann’s Press, Los Angeles, 2004) showing her increasing environmental awareness culminating in Millennial Forest, photographs of oldest trees in Vietnam and the U.S, two “enemy forests” who endure. In February 2018, Rubenstein’s monograph Eden Turned on its Side (2009-17) was published by the University of New Mexico Press with essays by curator, photography and cultural historian Dr. Shawn Michelle Smith, and award winning environmental writer Alan Weisman. William Fox, Director, Center for Art + Environment, Nevada Museum of Art has written of this work: “Meridel Rubenstein is a photographer whose domain includes sculpture, landscape design, architecture and earth systems science. She does not merely document the world, but seeks to save it.”

Her works are in the collections of The Honolulu Museum of Art, Hawaii, USA, the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, Germany, the New Mexico Museum of Art, USA, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California, USA and Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. USA.

In 1970, Rubenstein earned a bachelor’s degree in social science, with a film-making emphasis from Sarah Lawrence College, USA. She received an M.A. from the University of New Mexico, USA in 1974 and an M.F.A. in 1977. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1981 and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1983. From 1985 to 1990 she was head of the photography department at San Francisco State University, USA. In 1990 she returned to New Mexico to teach at the Institute of American Indian Arts. In 2006, she received a fellowship from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. She currently lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Singapore, where she has been teaching photography and video art at NTU for years.

Phone Sutra 1998

This is a photograph in the iconic post office built by the French in the early 1900’s in Saigon. The interconnectedness of all.

The Queen Tree 2000

This print is what the artist calls a pre-ambertype, made with vegetable inks printed digitally on tree bark (Mulberry) paper coated with ground mica and gum Arabic from 5″×7″ black-and-white negatives with artist-rendered color. In Vietnam, the oldest trees endure because they are taken care of and protected. Temple tree, palace tree, village tree, tomb tree, spirit’s tree. The Queen Tree is from the Cuc Phuong National Forest in North Vietnam. “She” was a sacred tree of the Mong people, predecessors of the current Vietnamese. She is 1,000 years old, quite ancient for the jungle and so revered that the native people cut circles just above her roots to enable them to take a piece of her home for their community altars, while at the same time not stopping her growth.