Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture at UMBC (CADVC) launches its 2025 program with “Conflux: Variation” (2025) by Baltimore-region artist collective Collis Donadio.
This public video art projection explores the intersections of industry and the environment in Baltimore, where water meets land. Between 2023 and 2024, collaborating artists Shannon Collis and Liz Donadio recorded video and audio documentation in sites where industry has reshaped local habitats, such as the Curtis Bay Water Tower and Baltimore City’s marine terminals. The artists think of this documentary research and resulting installation as a “speculative exploration of the future, using moving images to convey transformation and transition.
From the Curtis Bay industrial area, with its water tower and terminal where coal is stockpiled for shipment, to Masonville Cove, a nearly 50-acre environmentally restored space and the site of the nation’s first Urban Wildlife Refuge Partnership, the artists visited sites repeatedly and in all seasons, seeking to explore how industry, environment, and community converge and influence one another. The resulting footage was initially presented in a multiscreen installation artwork at Baltimore’s Voxel art space in 2024.
The updated work, now titled “Conflux: Variation,” was adapted for the CADVC public video art projection series in the Fine Arts Building amphitheater. This installation is designed and mapped responsively to the building, with segments of the video reflecting and animating specific features of the built environment on which the work is presented.
“This project marks the first time we are presenting our work outdoors, using the physical architecture of a building as a screen,” the artists reflected. “The sky becomes our black box. We hope the audience will encounter the work as we first approached our sites: through spontaneous, layered interactions.”
“We learned about the architectural investigations of Collis Donadio as part of our public art planning research, sponsored by the Maryland State Arts Council, in early 2023,” said CADVC Director and project curator, Rebecca Uchill. “Over a year later, we have built a spectacular infrastructure for public video art presentation. I’m thrilled to see the work of Collis Donadio presented in this series—they have been with us from the outset of this endeavor.”
Following the initiation of CADVC’s video art projection series in 2024, launched with experimental “demo” video presentations by artist Levester Williams, “Conflux: Variation” marks the first exhibition-length presentation of an artwork designed in response to the architecture of the building. The series will continue in Fall 2025 with a presentation by artist Paul Rucker, following his artist residency at CADVC.
“Conflux: Variation” will be on view nightly from sundown until 2 am between February 14 and June 30, 2025. CADVC will host a public talk featuring Shannon Collis and Liz Donadio on March 4 at 6 pm.
All CADVC programs are free and open to the public. If you need any specific accommodation to experience a CADVC exhibition or program, whether online or in person, please contact cadvc@umbc.edu or 410-455-3188 as soon as possible.