Lee Pivnik (b.1995) is an artist living in Miami, Florida. In 2018 he graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in Sculpture. Working across disciplines, he takes inspiration from living systems and other species to imagine a future based on mutualistic relationships instead of extractive economies. Permeating his practice is the idea of entanglement - the touching, changing, mutating relationships between species and their environments. Through these intimacies, worlds arise —worlds of decay and degradation or verdant flourishing. His sculptures, drawings, and installations create a visual language for ecological entanglement, referencing fungal networks, epiphytic plants, and emergent animal architectures that inhabit South Florida. Pivnik founded and co-directs the Institute of Queer Ecology (IQECO), an ever-evolving collaborative organism that has worked with over 150 different artists to present interdisciplinary programming that oscillates between curating programs and directly producing artworks. IQECO projects are interdisciplinary, but grounded in the theoretical framework of Queer Ecology, an adaptive practice concerned with interconnectivity, intimacy, and multispecies relationality. IQECO explores the overlaps between queer cultural production and multispecies biological adaptation to reveal a vibrant and complex world of belonging. Lee Pivnik’s work has been included in solo or two-person shows at Hotel Art Pavillion (NY), Mild Climate (TN), Biosphere 2 (AZ), YoungArts (FL), and Hi-Lo Press (GA). He has been awarded Knight Arts Challenge Awards in 2019 and 2021, and a Creative Capital Award (2025). Pivnik has been an artist in residence at Biosphere 2 (2017), Mana Contemporary Miami (2018), Atlantic Center for the Arts (2021), Deering Estate (2022–23), Oolite Arts (2024) and Folly Tree Arboretum (2024). Working as the Institute of Queer Ecology, Pivnik has presented projects with the Guggenheim Museum (New York, NY), the United Nations - ART 2030 (New York, NY), the Institute of Contemporary Art (Miami, Florida), Museo de Arte Zapopan, (Zapopan, Mexico), the Julia Stoschek Collection (Düsseldorf, Germany), Centre Pompidou-Metz (Metz, France), Museum Schloss Moyland, (Bedburg-Hau, Germany), Kestner Gesellschaft (Hannover, Germany) the Medellín Museum of Modern Art (Medellín, Colombia), the Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade (Serbia), the Biennale of Sydney (Australia), Prairie (Chicago, IL), Bas Fisher Invitational (Miami, FL) Gas Gallery (Los Angeles, CA), and Vox Populi (Philadelphia, PA), among others.
Additional Artworks
From AIRIE.Foundation
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Lauren Shapiro
February 2024 Fellow Lauren Shapiro in the Everglades, 2024
Video
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Charles Humes Jr.
Self-Hike, 2024
Watercolor on Paper
18 x 24 in
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Matt Venuti
Everglades Serenade, 2019
Music Video
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Jonquil Brookhart
Everglades, 2018
Mirror, Glass, Water
10.5 x 12.5 x 5 in
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Mary Keithan
Barred Owl, 2013
Archival Print
19 x 15 in
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Ron Morosan
Protect, 2002
Gouche on Paper
12 x 48 in
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Khari Turner
AIRIE.Foundation Residency Experience
Interviews
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Sheherazade Thénard
May 2026 Fellow Sheherazade Thénard