| Leonardo/ISASTwith Arizona State University

Barbara Benish

Founding Directorat ArtMill Center
smiling artist
santa cruz, california,
United States
Focus area: Ecology, Environment

Barbara Benish is a California-born artist, who moved from Los Angeles to Prague in 1992 as a Fulbright scholar. She founded ArtMill (est.2004) in rural Bohemia, an international eco-art center. From 2010-2015 she served as Advisor for U.N.E.P. in Arts & Outreach, and since 2015 is a Fellow at the Social Practice Arts Research Center, (University of California, Santa Cruz). She has taught at universities for over 30 years, including co-founder of the Experimental Graphics Atelier at the Academy in Brno, Czech Republic. Benish has co-authored two books on art and the environment (Routledge), and has an upcoming visual collaboration book with political philosophers Michael Shapiro and Sam Opondo (U. of Manchester Press, 2024). Her mixed media work has critiqued historical tropes that have kept unsustainable systems operating, and most recently reflects and celebrates non-human living systems. Benish’s art has been shown in hundreds of international exhibitions including alternative spaces, galleries and museums such as P.S.1 in New York, the Getty in Los Angeles, Stadtgeschichtliche Museen in Nürnburg, Germany, and the National Gallery in Prague, Czech Republic.