Faculty & Staff

Group of musicians performing in front of a projection of Past Deposits from a Future Yet to Come by Hubbard/Birchler
Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler, Past Deposits from a Future Yet to Come, 2024

Teresa Hubbard
William and Bettye Nowlin Professor in Photography
Area Head, Photography & Media

MFA, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax
BFA, University of Texas at Austin

Alexander Birchler 
Professor of Practice
Fellow, John D. Murchinson Professorship in Art

MFA, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax
BFA, Academy of Art and Design, Basel

Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler have been collaborating as an artist team since 1990. Their lens-based practice aims to inspire sensorial interactions and explore connections between social life, history and memory. Hubbard / Birchler often seek engagement with adjacent fields of study that have more conventionally been considered the domain of the anthropologist, archeologist or historian. They represented Switzerland in the Swiss Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennial. Hubbard / Birchler’s video installation, Past Deposits from a Future Yet to Come, (2024) commissioned by Waterloo Greenway, is currently on view nightly at the Moody Amphitheater, Austin, through 2029.

Hubbard / Birchler have presented their work in many of the most prominent art institutions including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art LACMA; National Portrait Gallery, London; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; Irish Museum of Modern Art Dublin; Kunstmuseum Basel; Reina Sofia Museum Madrid; Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the 48th + 57th Venice Biennials.

hubbardbirchler.net
teresahubbard@utexas.edu
alexanderbirchler@utexas.edu

black and white image of five teenagers standing in line with their right feet forward and pointed in dance-ready position
Eli Durst, Irish Dance, 2023

Eli Durst
Associate Professor of Practice
Department Assistant Chair for Studio Art

MFA, Yale University School of Art
BFA, Wesleyan University

Born and raised in Austin, Durst studied American literature and history at Wesleyan University before receiving his MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2016. His work blends the languages of conceptual and documentary photography, creating open-ended and ambiguous narratives. Durst received the Aperture Portfolio Prize for his series In Asmara, which examines the postcolonial legacy of Eritrea’s capital city, and a 2017 Aaron Siskind Individual Photographer’s Fellowship Grant. The Community, Durst’s first monograph, was published in 2020. His editorial work can be seen in various publications, including The New York Times Magazine, Vogue, The Atlantic, and Texas Monthly.

elidurst.com
eli.durst@utexas.edu

ariel image of what appears to be a large industrial sight in a desert landscape that sits adjacent to a small river
Will Wilson, Shiprock Disposal Cell, Shiprock, New Mexico, Navajo Nation, 2020

Will Wilson
Associate Professor

MFA, University of New Mexico
BA, Oberlin College

Will Wilson’s projects foster the continuation and transformation of customary Indigenous cultural practice. He is a Diné photographer and trans-customary artist. Wilson studied photography, sculpture, and art history at Oberlin College and the University of New Mexico (MFA, Photography, 2002). He is the recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award for Sculpture, the Pollock–Krasner Foundation Grant for Photography, and the Native Arts and Culture Foundation SHIFT fellowship. Wilson has taught at the Institute of American Indian Arts, Oberlin College, University of Arizona and Santa Fe Community College. In 2020, he was Doran Artist-in-Residence at Yale University Art Gallery, and recently co-curated Speaking with Light: Contemporary Indigenous Photography at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art.

willwilson.photoshelter.com
william.wilson@austin.utexas.edu

Image of a empty space in front of two walls of building
Melissa Nuñez, Ashland, 2020

Melissa Nuñez
Photography & Media Lab Manager
Lecturer

MFA, University of Florida
BFA, New World School of the Arts

Nuñez’s work focuses on how American industries have altered landscapes, degraded environments, and created ruins. Nuñez photographs American industrial ruins and uses hazardous waste found in these spaces to create a new structure arising from these degraded environments. Recent exhibitions include Alternative Processes at Soho Photo Gallery, New York; Southeast Museum of Photography, Daytona, FL; and Air Gallery, Manchester, England.

melnunez.com
melissanunez@austin.utexas.edu