On Sept. 11, 2025, the Hilliard Art Museum showcased its latest exhibits. This included three exhibits, each related to the theme of “connecting with the landscape.”
When first entering the Hilliard, the first exhibit that can be seen is “Nervescape XI,” made by Hrafnhildur Arnardó, also known as Shoplifter, an artist from Iceland. This work was extremely fascinating, as it took up nearly the entire space of the room it was being showcased in. It showed large, nerve-like structures scattered about the room, each covered in a variety of real and synthetic hair, all a multitude of different colors.When walking through it, you feel as if you’re walking through a fantasy-like jungle, the large structures towering over you and the vibrant hair hanging down. It’s something that can’t fully be expressed through a photo alone.
When asked what inspired the artist to make this piece, she stated, “I’m really inspired by colors, but also by nature and forms in nature like tanglements and vegetation, and then also on a microscopic level, when it comes to like, the neuroscience and neurons in your brain, all the pathways, veins and all the landscape that like happens under your skin that you don’t really like, thinks about all the time.”
She later said that she likes to take things out of context and give them life through her work, as she did for “Nervescape XI.” “…I want the viewer to dwell. Take time with the piece. Move around and just really kinda space out and just be transported into like some dream world that actually does exist here in this room,” Arnardó explained.
Moving on from “Nervescape XI,” directly across from it is the “Beyond the Botanical” exhibition, made by Mare Martin. Martin is a woman from Opelousas. The most fascinating part of this exhibit is that everything was made completely within her garden. As you walk around, you see numerous different paintings featuring plants within her garden and nature in general. There is even a collection of crawfish holes with a real crawfish within one of the displays.
Immediately going in, it feels like you are walking through the artist’s garden and into her own mind. My favorite detail of this exhibit is the walls, because of the sketched out plans for the design of her garden, further adding to the immersiveness of the exhibit. According to the museum, Martin wishes to draw the viewer in and make them reflect on their own personal experiences with the nature around them.
At the final exhibit upstairs, rather than it being centered on solely one singular artist, it instead features the works of three different artists: Harriet Joor, Manon Bellet and Hannah Chalew. The exhibit is called “Fragile Matter” and it features art from the museum’s permanent historical collection. The sole focus of the art was centered around Louisiana and the fragility of its ecosystem. This exhibit features a collection of different types of artworks, ranging from sculpture, sound, drawings, photography and even scent. Walking through, the theme became immediately apparent through the artworks on display.One of the most interesting parts of this exhibit were the displays in the back in which there were containers you could lift up and smell, each depicting water and sediment samples from different areas across Louisiana.
These exhibits will remain on display until varying times next year, giving people plenty of time to stop by and take a look at the artworks themselves.