Nathalie Miebach: Under A Restless Sky

August 2, 2025 – April 4, 2027

In Under A Restless Sky, Boston-based artist Nathalie Miebach creates a visual wonderland out of paint, paper, wood, ropes, and other materials, to explore how various species—birds and humans—move and adapt due to environmental and climate changes. She is particularly interested in the idea of a refugium—a place where a species finds shelter when conditions become unfavorable, somewhere where they can survive and even thrive. For example, the Swainson's Warbler finds refuge and flourishes in damaged areas vacated by humans after extreme weather. For Miebach, the Swainson’s Warbler offers the opportunity to consider what might be a human refugium.

Miebach digs deep into data points such as weather conditions recorded during historic tornadoes and drone footage depicting the resulting wreckage. Translated and transformed by Miebach, the data becomes a three-dimensional woven tapestry that she builds, unravels, and recombines to reveal how the shifting environment forces new patterns.

The installation includes layers of colorful shapes, real and imagined animals, and hybrid forms such as winged homes atop maps. It imaginatively tells the history of Arkansas’ major weather events; ones that have shaped the way people contemplate the weather. With a dynamic sense of circular movement that mimics both storm activity and the rebuilding process, Under A Restless Sky references the past, while probing questions about new future forms of shared habitat for humans and birds.

Visually stunning, the installation also functions as a multi-act musical score that will be collaboratively interpreted by a regional composer.

About Nathalie Miebach

Boston-based artist Nathalie Miebach creates innovative installations that intersect art and science. She deeply researches and tracks data connected to weather patterns and natural disasters to explore their impact on people’s lives.

Like a scientist, Miebach gathers research and creates data sets, translating the information into colorful, playful, and even hopeful installations made from painted paper, wood, and other various materials. Miebach distills the scientific complexity behind her work to reveal human stories of resilience and ingenuity in the face of our changing environment.

Miebach holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Eastern Asian Studies from Oberlin College, Ohio, along with two Master’s degrees, in Fine Arts, sculpture, and Art Education both from the Massachusetts College of Arts. She also completed courses in astronomy, physics, and oceanography at the Harvard University Extension, School, Massachusetts. Miebach’s solo exhibitions include presentations at the Institute of Contemporary Art - San Diego, California, the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Houston, Texas, and Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, Massachusetts among others.

She has also participated in group presentations at numerous institutions including, Louisiana State University Museum of Art, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts, Minneapolis Museum of Art, Minnesota, the Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin, and the Frist Museum of Art, Nashville, Tennessee, among others.

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