CULTIVATE is pleased to present a conversation with 2021 Cultivate Project Grant winner Inga Adda who will discuss her public park project Walk This Way. Walk This Way is a self-guided, participatory walk in the woods which encourages play, observation, and appreciation for the natural environment in Montgomery County, Maryland. Walking along Kingsley Trail in Little Bennett Regional Park, participants will encounter various prompts, and hypothetical questions posted on signs throughout the trail asking them to examine the natural world.

On the surface, these humorous messages create a positive, novelty experience for the person walking through the area. Upon closer examination, the questions and prompts are designed through the lens of de-centering the human point of view to stimulate consideration of nature outside of its relations or service to humanity. The signs encourage the walker to investigate how human interaction with the natural world has been influenced by these ideas.

This project represents a communion between the local human and ecological community of Montgomery County. In a time of anxiety and unrest, Walk This Way serves as a safe, grounding space, free to the public, and a social-distancing-friendly art experience. Through playful humor and a lighthearted approach, the posted prompts and questions widen the scope of our daily lives through an active interaction with nature and introduce a new perspective of our place within it.

Cultivate Project Grants support innovative, under-recognized artists or collaborative artist/interdisciplinary teams whose creative work resonates with the mission and vision of

Cultivate to investigate landscape, place, and the commons. The grant supports the realization of an exhibition, project, research, workshop or other critical events. The grant is made possible through small donations from artists and project supporters who believe in artists sustaining artists.

About Inga Adda:  Inga Adda is a fiber-based artist with an emphasis on materiality and experimentation. She received her B.F.A. in Fiber from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2020. Her work spans from performance to photography, textile and sculpture and often explores identity and the body in relation to its environment.  ingabragadottir.com

About CULTIVATE: Cultivate is an evolving collection of interdisciplinary artists, writers, and researchers driven by investigations of landscape, place, and the commons. Projects include experimental and practical art explorations that wrestle with the qualities, perceptions, and layers of experience that inform and expand notions of landscape. Ideas from a full spectrum of voices across generations are supported using sustainable tactics. From the hyper-local to the global, Cultivate reflects individual and collective curiosity, intention, imagining, and engagement with the phenomena of landscape.

Location: Shifting virtual and analog locations in watersheds around the globe with physical bases in the Washington, D. C. metro area, Montana, and Italy.

RSVP for zoom link: https://www.cultivateprojects.net/walkthisway

For information or images, please contact Susan Main at 301-943-4190 or [email protected].