The Harold J. Miossi Art Gallery, in cooperation with the Cuesta Performing Arts Center (CPAC), is pleased to present an artist talk and film screening with celebrated artist-activists Annie Sprinkle, Ph.D., and Beth Stephens on Wednesday, January 28, from 5:30–7:30 PM, followed by a preview of Samantha Nye's exhibition Web of Love from 7:30–8:00 PM. Sprinkle and Stephens are both Guggenheim Fellows and longtime collaborators whose work bridges performance art, experimental film, sexuality studies, and environmental activism.
The evening centers on a screening of their 71-minute documentary Playing with Fire: An Ecosexual Emergency, followed by a conversation with the artists. The film was shaped by the 2020 CZU Lightning Complex fires in Northern California, which forced the artists to evacuate their redwood forest home. Through an “ecosexual” lens—reimagining the Earth as a lover rather than a resource—the film blends grief, humor, ritual, and community care to explore how climate catastrophe intersects with social justice.
Immediately following the screening and talk, audiences are invited to a special preview of Web of Love, a solo exhibition by interdisciplinary artist Samantha Nye, opening Thursday, January 29, at the Harold J. Miossi Art Gallery. Nye is a recent Guggenheim Fellow and Creative Capital Awardee, and Web of Love serves as a conceptual and thematic extension of the ideas explored in Playing with Fire. Sprinkle and Stephens appear in Nye’s immersive video installation, linking the film program directly to the exhibition.
Web of Love officially opens on January 29 with a public reception from 4:30–7:30 PM and an artist talk from 6:00–7:00 PM, and will remain on view through March 13. Together, the January 28 screening and January 29 exhibition opening create a two-night public program exploring queer intimacy, environmental awareness, pleasure, and systems of care across film, installation, and performance.
Sprinkle and Stephens are internationally recognized as founders of the Ecosex Movement and creators of a trilogy of groundbreaking queer environmental documentaries, including Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story and Water Makes Us Wet: An Ecosexual Adventure. Their work has been presented at major cultural institutions worldwide, including documenta 14, the Venice Biennale, and the Museum of Modern Art.