Elijah Wheat Showroom is joyous to present a multimedia exhibition by artist photographer   Heather Renée Russ entitled Weathering. The show opens Saturday, 24 October and runs through Sunday, 6 December, 2026. The gallery  will be hosting an opening reception, with the artist: 3:00-8:00 PM Sunday 25 October, and an artist Q&A beginning at 3:00PM, Saturday 21 November, 2026.

Heather Renée Russ photographically captures stills of living plants grown by queer Hudson Valley/Catskill based femmes and trans people (of all genders). She also sources images from Riis Beach in the Rockaways and the Meatrack/Cherry Grove on Fire Island. Both, notable queer beaches in New York, where the artist is based. 

Weathering has a multilayered meaning as in: weathering a storm or a breaking down. There’s a tension in these meanings considering  both exposure and endurance. This exhibition considers being changed by external conditions while continuing to live, adapt, heal and create. As part of mutual efforts to cope and heal from cumulative stress, these botanicals pictured also help heal the planet.

In order to capture the stills, Russ uses a manipulated hand-built up-cycled scanner while photographing in the field. The scanner itself enacts cumulative exposure over time while undergoing repeated ‘abrasions’ during the capture. The scan is fragmented and disrupted over a sequence of light studies. It records the artist's body movements, her long and colorful nails, changing light, and the flowers as they shed and wither. A weathered image isn’t a diminished version of itself, it reveals experience, and layers, where it encounters something it cannot resolve. It results in fragmented rainbows like atmospheric glitches.

Presented outside the photos, is Heather Renée’s floating video encased in industrial aluminum honeycomb, depicting the recorded destruction of then landmark, Neponsit Beach Hospital on the People’s Beach/Riis Beach in 2023. Noticing how it once shielded the queers that landed beachside  by “the abandoned building,” it crumbles like the human rights the community has been fighting for-for decades. Tucked behind a back wall lives a prismatic installation depicting a series of queer bodies basking and crashing in the waves of Riis amongst woman-made rainbows. A viewer also stands above an active glass ‘pump’ of micro algae placed atop  cinderblocks so as to reflect on the truth. It is producing oxygen, gracefully cleaning the air by absorbing carbon. Russ also carefully places and cares for algae in her dual sculptures, while it cares for her in return.  The artist is in a reciprocal relationship with all: the algae, the beach and botanicals pictured.

Further, the title, Weathering references Arline T Geronimus’s biopsychosocial research which explores how chronic exposure to marginalization can produce cumulative physiological and psychological wear on a person. Meanwhile, these social conditions can become embodied leaving material traces over time through sickness and disease. We understand how marginalized people also tenaciously resist these forces through building community with mutual aid by ‘weathering together.’

Russ’ subject matter brings together the healing qualities by the Earth for humans as she intricately details an intimate understanding of the purposeful medicinal properties behind the botanicals. By carefully collecting and combining varied examples of restorative and beneficial plant species, Russ examines their forms remembering the healing properties through the lens. Many of the plants represent what others may know as weeds or perennials. However, the lore of her subjects beg for further understanding of a symbiotic support network. Blooms known as: Seaside Goldenrod, Yarrow, Queen Anne’s Lace, Black-eyed Susans, Bee Balm, Borage, Rue and Motherwort, all support pollinators, most also prevent soil erosion. Others, like Rue, Borage, Motherwort and Queen Anne’s Lace have long histories in traditional medicine associated with menstruation, reproductive health, and fertility regulation.

There are many other curative attributes to Russ’ imaged wall-flowers, however, we choose to dive deeper into one: Yarrow, otherwise known as ‘Melefour.’ It is noted that during the 1616 ‘witch trials’ Elspeth of Reoch in Scotland, plucked the herb while reciting incantations to treat illnesses and gain the power of prediction. Pictured in more than a few of Russ’ works, it offers strength in the feminine and helps one channel claircognizance. 

We are reminded of how collective structures are what help us weather together. Geronimus’s work also challenges the assumption that socioeconomic success necessarily protects marginalized people from weathering, emphasizing the importance of community relationships and collective strategies of care in resisting the physiological consequences of systemic oppression. Here at the gallery, the artist’s studio emerges, it is exposed, shared and emphasizes a close-knit community. As Heather Renée paraphrases from adrienne maree brown when she talks about the art of flocking: “Individuals may remain distinct, but their responsiveness to one another produces a larger, adaptive form.” This autumn, Elijah Wheat welcomes visitors to explore this timely, effective and flourishing multi-media exhibition. Please join us as we weather the storms together.

Heather Renée Russ (she/they) is a multidisciplinary artist working across experimental photography and installation. Her practice incorporates queer femme signifiers and organic materials to explore queer  ecologies, climate grief and the cumulative effects of stress on queer bodies, while centering queer joy and systems of care.

Russ presents her first solo exhibition at Elijah Wheat Showroom, NY, ’26 and previously at, Riis Beach: In Reverberation at NARS Foundation in Brooklyn in 2026 and Tidewrack at State University of New York (SUNY) Old Westbury in 2025. In New York group shows, she's exhibited with Elijah Wheat Showroom, Field Projects, Wassaic Project, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, Underdonk, Flux Factory, Stephen Street Gallery and the Every Woman Biennial at Pen & Brush. Her work has also been exhibited at NADA Miami with Paradice Palase, Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum (Cal State Long Beach), IMT Gallery (London), and SoMos (Berlin). Russ participated in residencies at Wassaic Project, NARS Foundation, MASS MoCA, ChaNorth, TransBorder Art and Vermont Studio Center and received the Powerhouse Arts Artist Subsidy Award in 2026. She is currently a member of the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts (EFA) Studio Program in New York City.

Russ comes from a rich history of organizing in underground art scenes. She co-directed Lair Fera, a queer collaborative space in Brooklyn. In San Francisco she co-produced Club Feral, a raucous mutual aid queer nightclub. The experience of stewarding spaces for queer artists in ever-shifting environments informs her work.