Artwork copyright Renée Green. Photo courtesy of Washington State Arts Commission, 2025.
Artwork copyright Renée Green. Photo courtesy of Washington State Arts Commission, 2025.
Artwork copyright Renée Green. Photo courtesy of Washington State Arts Commission, 2025.
Artwork copyright Renée Green. Photo courtesy of Washington State Arts Commission, 2025.
Space Poem #15 (To the Remembered Earth), 2025
Renée Green
(born 1959)
Location: Western Washington University, Bellingham
About the Artwork
Space Poem #15 (To the Remembered Earth), Part I: To the Remembered Earth is one of three Space Poems created by Renée Green for Western Washington University. It is part of Green's larger series consisting of colorful banners that use text from book titles, poetry, names of friends who have died, cultural people who influenced her life, as well as phrases written by her to explore language. Green describes this series as being, “open-ended... I’m interested in the possibilities between forms, ideas, and language. I’m always in between, working with combinations of many of these things.”
This Space Poem is a declaration of belonging and an offering to the earth. The twelve banners feature the following text:
To the remembered earth
When I think about my life
And the lives of my ancestors
I am inevitably led
To the conviction
That I, and they,
Belong to the American land
This is a declaration of belonging
And it is an offering
To the earth
Whole home
Amid climates and paradoxes
This artwork was acquired for the State Art Collection in partnership with Western Washington University.
About the Artist
Renée Green is an artist, writer, and filmmaker known for her multimedia installations in which cultures, histories, memories, and ideas are examined from many perspectives. Her complex and layered sculptural installations often involve film, digital media, sound, and writing with photography, textiles, printmaking, and other mediums.Green was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and studied art at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. Working as an educator has been an important part of Green's career. She has taught at many institutions, including the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program (ISP), the San Francisco Art Institute, as well as universities in Europe. Green is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) School of Architecture.
Translate