Working in a range of digital media, Julia Oldham (b. 1979, Frederick, MD) visualizes the uneasy collision of nature and technology in a fragile world. She documents extant environments such as the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in Ukraine, clear cut forests in Oregon, and swaths of derelict wilderness in New York City, and she also builds fictional worlds through drawing and animation. With tenderness and humor, Oldham explores her own conflicting feelings about human progress through her narrative works, envisioning speculative futures and exploring scientific history. The final works take the form of video installations, sound works and print projects. Her practice is research intensive, frequently involving scientists as collaborators.

Julia Oldham’s work has been shown widely, including exhibitions and screenings at the Queens Museum, Queens, NY; Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY; MoMA PS1 in Long Island City, NY; the Northwest Film Center at the Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR; the San Diego Art Institute, San Diego, CA; The Drawing Center in New York, NY; The Bronx Museum of Art in the Bronx, NY; The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, IL; Oregon Contemporary, Portland, OR; and the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA.

She has been supported by Artadia, the Fund for Art and Dialogue; NYC Urban Field Station; Artist in the Marketplace at the Bronx Museum of Art; the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council; the Oregon Arts Commission; The Ford Family Foundation; and the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs. Her work has been reviewed in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and the Village Voice, and has been featured on the NPR shows “State of Wonder” on OPB and “Inquiry” on WICN.