Artistic Research and Q&A

by Sasha Fishman and Lucy Cotter

Stelo Arts

Sunday, December 14th, 2025 | 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM

Please join us as New York-based artist Sasha Fishman shares her artistic research stemming from three months in the Pacific Northwest, where she immersed herself in the varying practices of the Army Corps-run Bonneville Lock and Dam, and the tribal-run hatcheries of the Yakama Nation. Fishman uses the complicated history of lamprey and sturgeon de-population, restoration, and education as her entry point into artistic research processes, while embracing biomaterial exploration, leading to unique sculptural and mixed media works.

Fishman’s working research in the Northwest region was in residency with ILY2, in preparation for her fascinating current exhibition Shad Mode - we highly recommend visiting the exhibition at ILY2 en route to her talk, as both venues are within a few minutes’ walking distance!

ILY2
925 NW Flanders
Portland, OR 97209

This talk is part of Lucy Cotter’s curated program, Artistic Research in a World on Fire, hosted by Stelo Arts in conjunction with her project residency 2024-5.

BIOGRAPHY:

Sasha Fishman holds an MFA from Columbia University, where she collaborated with labs on salmon, fountains, and carbon capture materials, Fishman is a 2024 Puffins Grant recipient, a 2024/25 Artist in Residence at Smack Mellon. Fishman lives and works in New York, NY. Fishman has exhibited her work at Murmurs (Los Angeles), Below Grand (New York), Resort (Maryland), Hesse Flatow (New York), Bozomag (Los Angeles), ILY2 (Portland), The Jewish Museum (New York), and The Indian Ceramics Triennale (New Delhi, India). She has participated in residencies at Smack Mellon (New York), Art Ichol (India), Acre (Wisconsin), NAHR (Italy) and the High Desert Observatory (California). Fishman has presented her work and run workshops at Printed Matter (New York), Genspace (New York), Navel (Los Angeles), Carnegie Mellon, UCLA (Los Angeles), UDenver (Colorado), UColorado Boulder (Colorado), Kenyon College (Ohio), MICA (Maryland), Caltech (California), and CSULB (California).

Lucy Cotter is a writer, artist, and curator whose practice engages with art as a form of knowledge and a site for radical cultural transformation. Cotter is the author of Reclaiming Artistic Research, a book of dialogues with artists that traces artists’ material, embodied, choreographic, and spatial ways of thinking. Her writing has appeared in art and literary journals (Flash Art, Frieze, Mousse, Hyperallergic, Artforum, Oregon Artswatch, Cirque, The Brooklyn Rail), academic books, and catalogs. She holds a PhD in Cultural Analysis on decolonizing curatorial practice. She was the curator of the Dutch Pavilion, 57th Venice Biennale, and her current program Artistic Research in a World on Fire program (2024-5) has taken place at Stelo Arts and Culture Foundation, e-flux, New York; The Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, and Rivers Institute for Contemporary Art and Thought, New Orleans. She is currently working on new artistic and curatorial work engaging with (disappearing, minor, diasporic) language in tandem with her hybrid memoir in progress, Between Language– A Love Song. 

IMAGE CREDITS:

Image 1:

Sasha Fishman
Plastic Trapped Love (Interpretive Hexagon), 2025

Image courtesy of the artist and ILY2.

Sand cast aluminum, ceramic, glass, solder, copper,
stainless steel hardware,ninkjet photographs of visits to Bonneville Hatchery,
Bonneville Lock and Dam, Yakama Nation Fisheries
81 1/2 x 89 3/4 x 82 inches

Image 2:

Sasha Fishman
Immortal by Wifi, 2025

Image courtesy of the artist and ILY2.

Ceramic with slough sand and glaze,
egg yolk tanned sturgeon skin, waxed cord
17 1/2 x 15 x 5 1/4 inches