Dawn Roe

Dawn Roe (b. 1971, Sault Ste. Marie, MI) was born and raised amidst what are now known as the Great Lakes where she developed a long term interest in land/water relations between human and more-than-human communities. Informed by early studies in experimental filmmaking and darkroom-based photography, Roe’s site-responsive practice combines historic and contemporary photographic methods with digital video to examine the role of these media in shaping personal and social understandings of our environment. With recognition of her response-abilities as a white woman from settler ancestry, Roe approaches land and water tentatively, as an uninvited guest. Her current work seeks to develop methods of respectful engagement with place centering multispecies relations as vital to supporting the health of interconnected waterways and the communities they support.

Roe's work has been exhibited throughout the U.S. and internationally at venues including The Sault Ste. Marie Museum (Sault Ste. Marie, ON, Canada); The Lightner Museum (St. Augustine, FL); GroundWork Gallery (Norfolk, U.K.); The Frost Art Museum (Miami, FL); ISU University Galleries (Normal, IL); The Orlando Museum of Art (Orlando, FL); Newspace Center for Photography (Portland, OR); Chiang Mai Photo Festival (Chiang Mai, Thailand); Screen Space Gallery (Melbourne, VIC, Australia); and The Perth Centre for Photography (Perth, WA, Australia). Her video works and installations have been screened at events including Submersive Atmospheres: Unterwasser-Kino (Oldenburg, Germany); Off the Screen for the Ann Arbor Film Festival (Ann Arbor, MI); The Athens International Film Festival (Athens, OH); and InLight Richmond (Richmond, VA). A two-year public art commission and residency from the Broward County Division of Cultural Affairs resulted in the production of a suite of artworks for the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida in 2015.