New Jersey Stage logo
New Jersey Stage Menu


?>

 

Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib’s New Immersive Installation, Field Companion, Transforms Rowan University Art Gallery Into a Microcosmic Forest

originally published: 08/26/2021


(GLASSBORO, NJ) -- Philadelphia-based artists Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib, known for their fantastical moving images and alternate realities, have created a new immersive film and installation for Rowan University Art Gallery. Field Companion, set in a microcosmic forest is based loosely on the pine barrens that dot Southern New Jersey. The exhibition runs from September 7th to October 30, 2021.  There will be an opening program on Thursday, September 16 from 5:00pm to 7:00pm.

Like many, the duo found refuge and solace throughout the COVID-19 pandemic hiking and foraging in these remote, natural landscapes. As America's social fabric frayed deeply over recent years, they considered forest ecosystems in terms of symbiotic and collaborative relationships that sustain coexistence and community.

In Field Companion, the forest has been condensed and transplanted to a terrarium in the artists' studio. Twelve cubic feet of pines, shrubs, ferns, moss, fungus and carnivorous plants are reflected infinitely in the terrarium's mirrored walls and captured with a motion-controlled camera and specialized macro lens that dramatically shift the scale and perspective of this miniature landscape. Living dwellers—snails, slugs, and insects inhabit the miniature ecosystem, accompanied by digitally rendered part-animal, part-human creatures. Through their conversations and interactions, they look forward, investigating progressive methods of sustainability. Bringing attention to questions surrounding social responsibility and community, Hironaka and Suib transform their microcosmic film set into the home of chimeric forest dwellers who consider themes of precarity, mutualism, and collaborative survival.

“Rowan University Art Gallery looks toward reopening this fall with a full schedule of programming that considers the challenges of the past 18 months that have contributed to unsettling and unprecedented times. As we are still working through those challenges it's increasingly important that we practice self-care and personal well-being. This coming gallery season RUAG responds to this ideation and will present a series of exhibitions that explores themes of empathy, solace, reclamation, and regeneration,” said Mary Salvante, Gallery Director.

Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib work collaboratively on films, videos, public artworks, and immersive installations spanning over a decade, often extending their collaboration to include other artists, musicians, and composers. Their practice embraces research and experimentation, encompassing historical fact, popular fiction, and creative speculation. Working across moving-image culture and mass media idioms, they build counter mythologies, alternate or parallel realities, and forward-looking visions of the world around us. 

The Philadelphia-based artists have been collaborators since 2008. They are recipients of several honored awards including a 2015 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, Pew Fellowships in the Arts, and Fellowships from CFEVA and Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Their work has been widely exhibited both domestically and abroad at venues including,  Fondazione MAXXI (Rome), New Media Gallery (Vancouver), The Institute of  Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), UCLA Hammer Museum, PS1/MoMA, Philadelphia  Museum of Art, and Arizona State University Art Museum. They have been artists-in-residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts, the Banff Centre, Marble House Project, and the Millay Colony for Arts. Matthew Suib is co-founder of Greenhouse Media and Nadia  Hironaka serves as a professor and department chair of film and video at the Maryland  Institute College of Art. Hironaka & Suib are represented by Locks Gallery. The couple, along with their daughter and one cat reside in South Philly.

Rowan University Art Gallery is located at 301 High St W in Glassboro, New Jersey. The gallery is open Monday through Friday (10 am - 5 pm) and Saturday (11 am - 5 pm). All visitors must wear a mask and practice safe distancing. 

The gallery serves as a premier cultural destination for South Jersey, the Rowan community, and the surrounding region. Our mission is to provide a platform for discourse on best practices in contemporary art by professional artists, curators, and scholars through the presentation of interdisciplinary art exhibitions, panel discussions, guest curatorial projects, and other public programming.  Field Companion was produced with support from Rowan University Art Gallery and Locust Projects in Miami. Additional support was provided by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.

IMAGE: Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib, Field Companion (Still detail image), 2021, Photo courtesy of the artists




Please support the advertisers at New Jersey Stage!
Want info on how to advertise? Click here



FEATURED EVENTS

ART | COMEDY | DANCE | FILM | MUSIC | THEATRE | COMMUNITY

To narrow results by date range, categories,
or region of New Jersey
click here for our advanced search.


The

The MAC players at the Middletown Arts Center present "Hairspray"

Saturday, July 19, 2025 @ 7:00pm
Middletown Arts Center
36 Church Street, Middletown, NJ 07748




 

The

The Mallard

Saturday, July 19, 2025 @ 7:30pm
Premiere Stages - Bauer Boucher Theatre Center
1000 Morris Avenue, Union, NJ 07083



The

The Mallard

Saturday, July 19, 2025 @ 3:00pm
Premiere Stages - Bauer Boucher Theatre Center
1000 Morris Avenue, Union, NJ 07083



Jax

Jax Hollow

Saturday, July 19, 2025 @ 7:30pm
Lizzie Rose Music Room
217 E. Main Street, Tuckerton, NJ 08087



The

The Wizard of Oz

Saturday, July 19, 2025 @ 7:30pm
Algonquin Arts Theatre
60 Abe Voorhees, Manasquan, NJ 08736





Advertise with NJ Stage for $50-$100 per month, click here for info





 

EVENT PREVIEWS

Trenton

Trenton City Museum to Hold Two Ellarslie Open Talks In August

(TRENTON, NJ) -- Ellarslie Open 42, the annual juried exhibition on view in Trenton City Museum at Ellarslie Mansion, invites the public to gallery talks Sunday, August 3 and Saturday, August 16, 2025. Admission for each talk is: $15/general public; $10/Trenton Museum Society members; $5/all EO42 entrants. Admission includes Continental breakfast fare.



Luke

Luke Jerram's Museum of the Moon to orbit Rahway in October

(RAHWAY, NJ) -- Museum of the Moon, a touring artwork by U.K. artist Luke Jerram, will be presented inside the majestic Union County Performing Arts Center (UCPAC) in October 2025. This is the first time Museum of the Moon will be presented in New Jersey and one of a handful of times it has been exhibited on the East Coast in the United States.



Sandy

Sandy Bennett Art Gallery at bergenPAC presents Works by Ellen Reinkraut

(ENGLEWOOD, NJ) -- The Sandy Bennett Art Gallery at bergenPAC presents New Jersey's esteemed contemporary artist, Ellen Reinkraut with "Layered Contemporary Mixed Media." The exhibit showcases extraordinary unique layered art inspired by the mystical element of life. It is on display through August 2025.



Kirby

Kirby & Delia: "All Rise"

The murals in the Brennan Courthouse (583 Newark Avenue) aren't tough to decipher. There are pilgrims, there are patriots, and there is Hudson County history rendered in the boldest strokes. Look to the underside of the building's grand dome and you'll find signs of the Zodiac; look to the walls for "The Coming of the English," a piece by Howard Pyle that depicts exactly what its title suggests that it will. This feels appropriate for the town's most handsome building — one with an interior reminiscent of classic civic architecture in Trenton and D.C. and the decorated Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, and named after a jurist whose written decisions on the Supreme Court were distinguished by their clarity. William Brennan believed in the salutary effects of direct and comprehensible language. For him, the law was no place for abstraction.



Gallery

Gallery at HACPAC presents Colorblind, a solo exhibition of paintings by Val DeAppolonio

(HACKENSACK, NJ) -- The Ruth Bauer Neustadter Gallery at Hackensack Performing Arts Center (HACPAC) presents Colorblind, a solo exhibition of paintings by Val DeAppolonio from July 7 through August 29, 2025. Val is a self-taught, colorblind artist from Northern NJ whose bold abstracts pulse with energy and motion.