UNB15! Artist Features: VI
UNBOUND15!
July 1 – August 8, 2026
GLEN SCHEFFER • CHRISTIAAN LOPEZ-MIRO • CURTIS MILLER • KAT BAWDEN • ZACHARY KOLDEN • SHEIDA SOLEIMANI
GLEN SCHEFFER | BROOKLYN, NY
Archival pigment print,
24 x 30 inches
Edition #1 of 5
$1,500
Through photography, I explore the ways we experience and interpret the places we inhabit. My work invites conversations about place, identity, and the rhythms of everyday life. I am drawn to the ways the physical world shapes human culture, how landscape influences our sense of belonging and the stories we tell about ourselves. The nuanced relationship between human presence and the places that shape our individuality, illuminating both the harmony and the quiet frictions within these connections.
This series focuses on coastal York, Maine, where land and ocean meet in a constant dialogue. I examine the shifting boundaries between water and earth and the tensions they create. How they influence not only the physical terrain but also the sense of belonging and continuity within the community. The project reflects on permanence and change, isolation and connection, and the enduring influence of natural forces on human experience.
Longsands Rock, 2025. Archival pigment print, 24 x 30 inches. Edition #1 of 5. $1,500
Glen Scheffer uses photography to create narrative driven images that move between realistic representation and post documentary forms, embracing how stories can be conveyed visually through the lens. Glen works with large and medium format cameras to photograph the subjects and scenes he encounters. He completes his work in the darkroom, as archival pigment prints, and through the creation of books. Glen exhibits work regularly in the Boston area and around the world, Recently, Glen’s handmade book “Sara is Always Surprised by the Weather” was part of the On the Shelf exhibition at Filter Photo Gallery in Chicago, IL and had selected works exhibited at the Photographic Resource Center in Cambridge, MA. Glen also was selected to attend Chico Review in 2026. He is a Professor of Photography at the Institute of Art & Design at New England College.
CHRISTIAAN LOPEZ-MIRO | TROY, NY
Teresa and Her Possums, 2025. Archival pigment print, 32 x 24 inches. Edition #2 of 8. $1,600
Archival pigment print,
32 x 24 inches
Edition #2 of 8
$1,600
Fractured reflects an evolving responsiveness to the new world I find myself in: the American South.
As someone originally from Miami, Florida, I often joke that Miami isn’t really part of the South; it is the northernmost tip of Latin America.
I moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, six years ago, and set out to create work rooted in my newfound environment. Since then, my photography has been a visceral response to the curiosities, contradictions and complexities of my Southern surroundings.
Fractured oscillates between unsetting, often ambiguous portraits of Southerners and complicated landscapes. The results of this recent work are striking, rich with contradictions and layered with tension – often echoing the thick-soupy, sometimes oppressive, atmosphere of the South itself. Both alluring and cautionary, the images in Fractured invite the viewer to look and simultaneously turn away. There is an undercurrent of morbid fascination, a reflection of our current fractured moment, pulling at both the heart and the nerves.
Some images hint at a universal truth: no matter how carefully we proceed in life trying to hold things together, we are all fleeting; destined, eventually to face the same impermanence. Time can be measured through some of the photographs, confronting the viewer with the ephemeral beauty of youth and the inevitable arrival of age, reminding us that, in the end, nothing remains untouched. We strive to maintain order, but ultimately everything falls apart.
The characters and places in Fractured form a constellation: an interconnected web of stories and spaces. Seeking to resist stereotypes or pull the viewer into easy narratives, I aspire to present a complex portrait of the South; one that invites reflection without dictating meaning.
Christiaan Lopez-Miro is a lens based artist born and raised in Miami, FL. He received his BFA in Fine Arts with a concentration in Photography from Florida International University in 2006. In 2019 he relocated to the Durham/Chapel Hill area of North Carolina and has centered his practice on photographing his new southern surroundings. He works with both medium/large format film and digital formats, making both C-Prints and Archival Pigment Prints. With a keen interest in cultural anthropology, Lopez-Miro's photographs deal with themes of community and the people that shape them, with a focus on spiritual communities. He has published two monographs, which are in various collections both public and private including the University of Miami's Special Collections Library and the North Carolina Museum of Art's Library in Raleigh. His work has been exhibited extensively nationally and internationally.
CURTIS MILLER | NYC
Archival pigment print,
36 x 28 inches
Edition #1 of 5 + 2AP
$750
From The Lawn - Fountain View, 2026 Archival pigment print,
36 x 28 inches. Edition #1 of 5 + 2AP. $750
These South Lawn blow-ups begin as official White House press photographs drawn from the archive — images produced to circulate seamlessly as documents of state. I rephotograph them using a medium-format camera mounted on a copy stand, translating the administrative print back into film, allowing grain, dust, and slight optical shifts to enter the surface. The negatives are then scanned and printed at an exaggerated scale, moving once more between analog and digital registers. Through these layered translations, the lawn — so often encountered as a neutral backdrop to power — begins to shift, its seamless surface breaking into texture and evidence, revealing itself as an active ground where political authority is staged and made to appear natural.
Curtis Miller is an artist and educator working across film, video, photography, and publication. His work often takes the American Midwest as both site and subject. His films have screened internationally at the Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, Antimatter, Chicago International Film Festival, DMZ Documentary Festival, EXiS, IDFA, Mimesis Documentary Festival, and Visions du Réel, as well as the Hyde Park Arts Center, Indiana University Cinema, and the Renaissance Society, among others.
Other venues for performance, printed matter, and installations include the Chicago Artist Book Fair, MdW Art Fair, College Arts Association, Gallery 400, Tiger Strikes Asteroid and various artist-run projects and spaces throughout the Midwest. He has taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the City Colleges of Chicago, and most recently as lecturer for the Department of Art, Theory, and Practice at Northwestern University. In 2025, he was named one of Filmmaker Magazine's "25 New Faces of Independent Film.
KAT BAWDEN | VIRGINIA
Archival pigment print,
4 x 2 inches, framed 10 x 8 inches,
Edition #1 of 5
$800
Untitled (Being Eugene’s Mother), 2025. Archival pigment print, 4 x 2 inches, framed 10 x 8 inches. Edition #1 of 5. $800
Archival pigment print,
4 x 2 inches, framed 10 x 8 inches,
Edition #1 of 5
$800
Untitled (Being Kamille's Mother), 2025. Archival pigment print, 4 x 2 inches, framed 10 x 8 inches. Edition #1 of 5. $800
In Mother Figure, I invite participants to pose with me as a stand-in for their mother or a maternal figure. Through a visual emphasis on touch and gesture, the photographs capture the complex spectrum of experiences we have with caregivers: attachment and security, tension and neglect, intimacy and eroticism. By embodying the role of the maternal figure, I create a space where participants can reenact and reimagine their childhood experiences. The photographs hover between documentary and fantasy, blurring the line between personal history and theatrical performance.
The project stems from my internal conflict over not having biological children, and through these images I project my fantasies and fears of parenthood, as well as my curiosity about forms of “mothering” that exist beyond parenthood. When beginning this project, I felt a strong need to be seen in this mothering role, to perform “mothering” for a camera. Photography is a medium that holds a dynamic tension between what is seen and unseen, what is real and what is not, what is content and what is context. The medium both reinforces and questions reality, and through it, I explore, exhume, and play with my and my participants’ memories and shifting understandings of family.
Kat Bawden (she/they, b. Chicago, IL) is an artist working across photography, installation, and performance. Her practice explores the relationship of trauma, memory, and the body, incorporating image-making as a process of questioning and reconstructing reality. Trained as a dancer and singer from an early age, Kat draws on the body as an expressive medium of its own. Playfully and rhythmically, she photographs and films herself in precarious physical states, often recreating memories and dreams. Her images and videos hover between private interiority and voyeuristic gaze, activating the viewer as a participant.
Her live performances and light-based installations are natural extensions of her photographic practice. Approaching live performance as an act of image-making, Kat incorporates stillness and a quiet, tense focus. Her light-based installations attune viewers’ bodies to the physiological and emotional effects of light and space, creating somatically-immersive visual worlds. Inviting viewers into such spaces, Kat’s work asks how we can more deeply situate ourselves in our own lives and in our capacity for healing.
Kat holds an MFA in Photography from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she was awarded the James Weinstein Memorial Fellowship. She has been an artist-in-residence with Prairie Ronde, ISSP Latvia, and Artists in Public Schools. Recent performances and exhibitions include the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the International Center of Photography, EXPO Chicago, the International Museum of Surgical Science, the Design Museum of Chicago, Roots & Culture, Iceberg Projects, and others.
She is a recipient of an Individual Artist Grant from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs. Her work has been featured in Artforum, Der Grief, Lenscratch, Chicago Reader, Chicago Sun-Times, and others. Before becoming an artist, Kat studied political philosophy and environmental science at the University of Michigan and worked as a community organizer and teacher. In 2023 she started Murmuration, an experimental art space and artist residency.
ZACHARY KOLDEN | CHICAGO, IL
Grundarfoss, 2024. Laser cut archival inkjet, white oak, & acrylic, 25 x 19 inches. Edition of 5. $600
Laser cut archival inkjet,
white oak, & acrylic,
25 x 19 inches
Edition of 5
$600
As a lens-based artist, my most recent work explores the intersection of
photography, sculpture, and the natural world. This intersection becomes an
interplay between image and physicality, challenging distinctions between two and
three dimensions. Utilizing various materials, such as transparent acrylic, as tools
for concealment and deliberately obscure portions of the photograph through
cutting. The concept of the “frame” is also a pivotal element in my creative process
and an intentional visual disruption of the photographed landscapes. In the work,
the frame is not merely a boundary, it is an integral part of the narrative,
questioning traditional perceptions and inviting viewers to reconsider their
relationship with what is seen and what remains obscured.
The use of frames, transparent acrylic, and cutting techniques serve as boundaries
and conceptual tools to shape how we perceive the captured moment and the
surrounding environment in the work. In addition, these techniques draw attention
to the notion that the act of looking takes place through the viewfinder of a camera,
as the cutouts mimic this very act. Viewers are invited to question what lies beyond
the visible and confront the limits of their own perception. The intentional
disruptions to the photographs are not merely a means of abstraction, they engage
us with the natural world more deeply, encouraging exploration of what may
otherwise be unseen and unknown.
Zachary Kolden is an artist/photographer based out of Minnesota. He earned his bachelor's degree from University of Wisconsin-Stout and went onto earn his master's degree from Washington State University. He has exhibited throughout most of the Northwest & Midwest as well as nationally and internationally during Auckland, New Zealand's photography festival. He currently resides in Minneapolis Minnesota where he currently works in the School of Art and Design at the University of Wisconsin-Stout.
SHEIDA SOLEIMANI | BROOKLYN, NY
Crying Quince,
Laughing Apple, 2022Archival pigment print, 24 x 18 inches.
Deltang I, 2024. Archival pigment print, 24 x 18 inches.
In her newest series "Ghostwriter," Soleimani turns her camera inwards to explore her family’s history of exile from Iran and the transference of the notion of home. The series of tableaux images ‘ghostwrite’ her parents' life tracing their time living in Iran as pro-democracy activists and the conditions that led to their displacement to the United States.
Sheida Soleimani is an Iranian-American multimedia artist, activist, and professor whose work highlights the relationships between powerful political people, groups, governments, and corporations, in order to raise questions from the viewer. The themes of her work are topics not often discussed in the West, for example, highlighting the women executed in Iran, and the relationship between power, exploitation and oil, among others. The work is often displayed as a photograph or video of a staged image, Soleimani uses various materials in the work including, soft sculpture "dolls", photography, props, masks, and cut-outs of digital prints.
