Land/Water Protector and Artist EMILY JOHNSON is DiverseWorks’ inaugural Art + Climate speaker

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contact: Eva Martinez, Operations and Marketing Director, DiverseWorks
eva@diverseworks.org / 713.223.8346

(Houston, TX, July 14, 2026)  – DiverseWorks announces award-winning artist Emily Johnson as the inaugural speaker for its new  Art + Climate CONVERSATIONS program. Presented by the DW Art + Climate Partners, the talk will take place at 6:30 PM on Wednesday, July 29, 2026, at the Midtown Arts & Theater Center, Houston.

Johnson is the artistic director of the performance company Emily Johnson / Catalyst and is known for creating body-based performances that focus on connections to the environment, land, and ancestors. Her work is interwoven with land and water protection, and she frequently collaborates with other Indigenous artists and activists. The New York Times described Johnson as “A magnetic performer, adept at mobilizing people, onstage and off…” DiverseWorks is honored to welcome Johnson back to Houston to speak on this timely and critical conversation at the intersection of art and environmental activism.

A citizen of the Yup’ik Nation and currently based in Lenapehoking (New York City), Emily Johnson was in Houston fifteen years ago to present her multi-disciplinary performance The Thank-You Bar and the exhibition This is Displacement: Native Artists Consider the Relationship Between Land and Identity at DiverseWorks. Johnson has since become nationally lauded by the dance and art worlds and land and water rights advocates alike. Johnson’s talk precedes the presentation of Overflow Radio: Šakotayišol Nunuš Constellation, a project of Emily Johnson / Catalyst, developed in partnership with and presented at DiverseWorks in October.

Since 2024, DiverseWorks has been deepening its understanding of organizational and curatorial frameworks that can incorporate decolonial practices and establish long-term relationships with Indigenous artists and communities in Houston. This work has been further shaped through working with First Nations Performing Arts and Emily Johnson / Catalyst’s Decol Rider. DW has committed to contributing 10% of ticket revenue to Texas Tribal Buffalo Project to support land rematriation.

Art + Climate CONVERSATIONS was developed by the DiverseWorks Board of Directors and staff to highlight artists and creatives leading the way in addressing climate-related issues through their work. The DW Art + Climate Partners is part of DiverseWorks’ Art + Climate plan, a comprehensive program that began in 2023-24 to guide the organization and its programming towards a more sustainable future for the arts.

Visit diverseworks.org for more information.

SPEAKER BIO

Emily Johnson is an artist who makes body-based work. Emily belongs to the Yup’ik Nation, is a land and water protector and an organizer for justice, sovereignty and well-being. A Bessie Award-winning choreographer, Guggenheim, Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, United States Artists, Braiding Seeds, Forge Project, Center CIRCL Fellow, and recipient of the Doris Duke Artist Award, among others, Emily is based in Lenapehoking. Since 1998, Emily’s large-scale performance gatherings insist on thrivance, radical reworlding, and just futures. Her gatherings function as portals and care processions, engaging audienceship within and through space, time, environment—interacting with a place’s architecture, peoples, histories, and role in building futures. Emily is trying to make a world where performance is part of life; where performance is an integral connection to each other, our environment, our stories, our past, present, and future.

Emily’s choreography and gatherings have been presented across what is currently called the United States, Canada, and Australia. Her current project, Overflow Radio is a performance, skill-share, planting of 1000 trees, and radio transmission taking place over 24 non-consecutive hours within a massive quilt installation and across geographies and territories. Emily’s recent work, Being Future Being, premiered on Tongva Land in Los Angeles in 2022, and was presented at PICA’s TBA Festival, Bates Dance Festival, Jacob’s Pillow, and Festival TransAmériques, among others. Her large-scale project, Then a Cunning Voice and A Night We Spend Gazing at Stars is an all-night outdoor performance gathering taking place amongst 84 community-hand-made quilts. It premiered in Lenapehoking (NYC) in 2017 and was presented in Zhigaagoong (Chicago) in 2019. She choreographed the Santa Fe Opera production of Doctor Atomic, directed by Peter Sellars in 2018. In 2011, DiverseWorks presented her performance The Thank-You Bar in conjunction with the exhibition This is Displacement: Native Artists Consider the Relationship Between Land and Identity (co-curated by Johnson and Diné visual artist Carolyn Lee Anderson).

Emily’s lectures and writings have been published and commissioned by Playwrights Canada Press, The Routledge Companion to Performance Art, The Open Society University Network’s Center for Human Rights and the Arts, CEC Artslink, The Poetry Project, ArtsLink Australia, unMagazine, Dance Research Journal (University of Cambridge Press); SFMOMA; Transmotion Journal, University of Kent; Movement Research Journal; Pew Center for Arts and Heritage; and the compilation Imagined Theaters (Routledge), edited by Daniel Sack. Emily authored the Decolonization Rider (2020), a document that now serves as a foundation for structural change work in hundreds of cultural institutions across what is called the US.

Emily hosts monthly fires on Mannahatta in partnership with Urban Cree scholar, Kai Recollet. Emily was the Pueblo Opera Cultural Council Diplomat at Santa Fe Opera 2018-2020. She was a lead organizer of First Nations Dialogues, a member of Creative Time’s inaugural Think Tank, a co-compiler of the documents, Creating New Futures: Guidelines for Ethics and Equity in the Performing Arts and Notes for Equitable Funding. Emily served as Social Practice Resident at Kennedy Center for the Arts (2021-2022) and is a Social Practice Artist in Residence at Abrons Arts Center (2019 – present). Emily is co-lead for First Nations Performing Arts.

PROGRAM INFORMATION

Art + Climate CONVERSATIONS: Emily Johnson
Presented by DW Art + Climate Partners
Wednesday, July 29, 2026, 6:30 PM
Matchbox 2 @ MATCH 
3400 Main Street, Houston, TX, 77002

ADMISSION: 
Suggested Ticket Price: $25 (pay-what-you-wish).
10% of ticket sales will be donated to the Texas Tribal Buffalo Project.

PARKING: 
Free street parking in the area; paid parking in the MidMain parking garage. https://matchouston.org/location-parking

ACCESSIBILITY: 
ASL interpretation provided. Other accommodations are available upon request. Please contact eva@diverseworks.org to make arrangements.

ABOUT DW ART + CLIMATE PARTNERS

DW Art + Climate Partners support DiverseWorks as we develop environmentally sustainable practices in the arts through talks and symposia; support artists to create climate-focused projects; and envision a climate-forward facility for artists, community members, organizations, and collectives — the first of its kind in Houston.