Gallery

Natural Fictions

September 30, 2026 – March 6, 2027

Exhibition dates: September 30, 2026 – March 6, 2027

Opening Reception: Wednesday, September 30, 2026

Curated by: Lindsay Albert (Program Manager, KADIST) and Sso-Rha Kang (Curator, The Carnegie)

In an age marked by accelerated change and ecological instability, this exhibition proposes a slower, stranger, and more speculative gaze. Natural Fictions gathers artists who harness photography’s potential to imagine new relationships with the natural world—ones that are not bound by documentary fidelity but instead embrace transformation, fiction, and play. Through their work, the landscape becomes a site of experimentation and wonder, where speculative futures and unseen pasts coexist in surreal, poetic, and scientific inquiry.

The artists in this exhibition use the lens not merely to capture the world as it is, but to destabilize it. They fold time, alter perspective, and merge disciplines, constructing images that evoke geological duration, cosmic scale, and embodied mythologies. Some simulate environments that never existed, while others render familiar terrain uncanny through shifts in material, scale, or cultural reference. Their practices explore the camera as both a tool and collaborator in seeing beyond the visible and the known.

In dialogue with FOTOFOCUS Biennale, The Long View, this exhibition considers how photography can resist linearity and certainty. What new narratives emerge when nature is approached as something invented as much as it is observed? What futures might become imaginable when science meets spirit, or when perspective is shaped by play instead of conquest? Natural Fictions invites viewers to look sideways—and forward—at the environments we inhabit, inherit, and imagine.

Support for this 2026 FotoFocus Biennial exhibition was provided by FotoFocus. Event Image: Lydia Smith.

Details

Artists: Sean McFarland, Heesoo Kwon, Mareiwa Miller, Phillip Maisel, Joshua Berg, Ruby Que, Lydia Smith

Natural Fictions is part of the 2026 FotoFocus Biennial: The Long View. Now in its eighth iteration, the Biennial activates over 70 exhibitions at museums, galleries, universities, and public spaces throughout Greater Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, and Northern Kentucky in October 2026.

About the Biennial

The FotoFocus Biennial, now in its eighth iteration, activates over 70 exhibitions at museums, galleries, universities, and public spaces throughout Greater Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, and Northern Kentucky in October 2026. Each Biennial is structured around a

unifying theme; the 2026 theme, The Long View, considers aspects of time and perspective in photography and film, and how these mediums shape our understanding of the world.

FotoFocus welcomes global artists, curators, critics, educators, and visitors to Cincinnati with exhibitions, talks, performances, screenings, and panel discussions during its Biennial Opening Events, October, 1–3, 2026.