FIFTY-FIFTY is an artist collective founded by Lisa Bulawsky and Laurencia Strauss, working at the intersection of individual experience and the public sphere, negotiating cultural tensions through socially engaged participatory art practices. Their work includes Portable Memories in Rising Seas, an iterative and participatory project presented at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, CA (2020), online with the Climagration Network and Sustainable Solutions Lab at U Mass Boston (2021), at the Miami-Dade Public Library, Miami, FL and The Sanger Gallery at The Studios of Key West, FL (2018). Earlier projects include Stories for Fishes at O Cinema Wynwood, Miami FL (2016) and Ferguson (with Emily Squires), as part of Signs in the Public Sphere in Knoxville, TN (2015).
Lisa Bulawsky is an artist whose practice is driven by questions concerning the nature of time as evidenced in the natural world, through public histories, and the lived experience of individuals. She’s interested in vast and intimate timescales, the marks we make on the world and those made on us. Her work manifests in a range of activities including works on paper and participatory projects, and temporary public art. Lisa is professor of art and director of Island Press in the Sam Fox School at Washington University in St. Louis.
Laurencia Strauss is a visual artist and trained landscape architect who investigates vulnerabilities and ingenuities of people and the places they inhabit. She creates experiences that challenge our interdependencies. Social actions, installations and projects in public spaces become platforms for conversations and rethinking normative systems. Her alternative site analyses rely on social engagement and share researching a place with the people who live there. Recent solo exhibitions include Infiltracao at Peninsula Gallery, Porto Alegre, Brazil (2016), Landlines at Penland School Gallery, North Carolina (2016), and Reclining Islands at Fort Gondo Compond for the Arts, St. Louis (2014). Group shows include Waterscapes at The Box Gallery, Ft. Lauderdale (2016), Hightide at Satellite, Miami Beach (2015), and Museo con Piernas, Chile (2014).