Barbara Gooding’s work depicts a world of leafy humanoid creatures dancing, parading, throwing up, and joyously running amok. Proud and mischievous, these characters are content to explore themselves and the world they create. We are invited there to mourn, memorialize, and remake the natural world we see fading around us in real time. Drawing on the collective dread of a disappearing landscape, this work is an elegy for our environment and an insidious warning of its inevitable wrath.

Made of hand-cut paper, the works are fragile, detailed, and cumulative. Deceptively serene at first glance, their essence reveals how crude, chaotic, and alive they really are. The creatures embody a carnival spirit, an iteration of the grotesque where humor, beauty, and vulgarity become the same thing. The source material includes botanical drawings, field guides, film, animation, and artist and scientist biographies, all of which result in a rich and scenic story— the heart of which is that nature will always have the last laugh.

Barbara (b. 1991) received a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI. Originally from Kentucky, she now lives and works in Queens, NY.