Bio
Alice Hargrave, a photo based artist, incorporates sound, video, and photographic imagery within layered site specific installations addressing impermanence: environmental insecurity, habitat loss, and species extinctions. Recently, The Canary in the Lake, exhibition and monograph, revisualizes climate related data from lakes on all seven continents. In 2023, Hargrave was selected to create original artwork for Chicago’s esteemed public art program through the Chicago Transit Authority where her works will be translated to etch and printed glass at Mayor of Munich where she was recently in residence.
Hargrave collaborated with The Cornell Lab of Ornithology, to create her project Last Calls, portraits of threatened birds using sound wave patterns of their vocalizations in the wild. Last Calls is widely exhibited, internationally in Lianzhou, China, and won a 2020 Illinois Arts Council Individual Artist Grant, and the 2019 finalist award. The bird call patterns are translated into “Haute Couture” garments by Dovima Paris where profits directly benefit the birds. Paradise Wavering Hargrave’s monograph (Daylight 2016) and extensive solo exhibition traveled to multiple venues across the United States.
Hargrave, is included in several permanent collections such as The Museum of Contemporary Photography, The Art Institute of Chicago Artist Book Collection, The Ruttenberg Collection, Willis Tower, Aurora University Art Museum, and many private collections. She has exhibited internationally, been reviewed in journals such as Huffington Post, BBC News, and ARTNET, and her research awarded her Artist Residencies in The Florida Keys, Montana, Vermont, Wisconsin, and a fellowship at Ragdale. Hargrave taught full time at Columbia College — currently she is pursuing conservation work and climate activism through her artwork — putting the work to work is her modus operandi.