Art + Climate CONVERSATIONS: Emily Johnson

The DiverseWorks Art + Climate Partners present Emily Johnson as the inaugural speaker for Art + Climate CONVERSATIONS. Join Houstonians, climate advocates, dance and art enthusiasts, and artists alike on the evening of July 29th for a talk by Johnson, a Yu’pik multi-disciplinary artist, choreographer, land and water protector, and organizer for justice, sovereignty and well-being. In October 2026, Johnson’s Overflow Radio will be presented at DiverseWorks.

Art + Climate CONVERSATIONS highlights artists and creatives that are leading the way on addressing climate-related issues through their work. The DW Art + Climate Partners support and advise on climate programming and future projects. DiverseWorks’ Art + Climate program began in 2023-24 and consists of a climate action plan that guides the organization; programming that increases awareness of the effects of climate change; support for artists to develop environmentally sustainable practices; and the development of a new, climate-forward facility for artists, community members, and other non-profit organizations to share.

Speaker Bio
Emily Johnson is a Bessie Award-winning choreographer, Guggenheim, Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, and United States Artists Fellow, and recipient of the Doris Duke Artist Award. She is based in Lenapehoking / New York City. Emily is of the Yup’ik Nation, and since 1998 has created work that considers the experience of sensing and seeing performance. Her dances function as portals and care processions, they engage audienceship within and through space, time, and environment — interacting with a place’s architecture, peoples, history and role in building futures. Emily is trying to make a world where performance is part of life; where performance is an integral part of our connection to each other, our environment, our stories, our past, present and future.

Her choreography and gatherings have been presented across what is currently called the United States and Australia. 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. Being Future Being, premiered on Tongva Land in Los Angeles in 2022. 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 writing has been published and commissioned by The Open Society University Network’s Center for Human Rights and the Arts, 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: Writing for a Theoretical Stage (Routledge).

Emily hosts monthly ceremonial fires on Mannahatta in partnership with Abrons Arts Center and Kai Recollet. She was the Pueblo Opera Cultural Council Diplomat at Santa Fe Opera 2018-2020, and a lead organizer of First Nations Dialogues. She was a co-compiler of the documents, Creating New Futures: Guidelines for Ethics and Equity in the Performing Arts and Notes for Equitable Funding, was a member of Creative Time’s inaugural Think Tank, and serves as a working consortium member for First Nations Performing Arts.