Landscapes of Matter & Rituals of Belonging: unique works by Renee Royale

Renee Royale’s work approaches related histories through ritual, ecology, and duration. In Landscapes of Matter (2021–2023), Royale documents ecologically impacted sites in Louisiana using a Polaroid camera, then submerges the exposed prints in water, dirt, and plant matter for a full moon cycle. This time-based process registers what the artist describes as the “slow violence” of settler colonialism and slavery; systems that have irreversibly altered both human and natural worlds. Enlarged and abstracted, the resulting images bear the marks of environment and time, transforming landscape into witness.

Rituals of Belonging extends Royale’s inquiry into collective identity and survival. Returning repeatedly to the same site along Lake Michigan, the artist created images from a fixed vantage point and gathered lake water to “undevelop” the photographs. Through this sustained engagement, Royale asks: What does it mean to belong? What does it mean to be excluded? And what are the costs—social, bodily, existential—of difference or transcendence from the group?