Heidi Nitze Art × Environment 2026 Fellows - Brooklyn Botanic Garden
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Heidi Nitze Art × Environment 2026 Fellows
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Heidi Nitze Art × Environment 2026 Fellows

The Heidi Nitze Art × Environment Fellowship at Brooklyn Botanic Garden invites visionary artists and environmental thinkers to work in partnership to create site-specific installations that spark public engagement with pressing environmental challenges.

2026 Fellowship Team: Olalekan Jeyifous and AD—WO

During their fellowship, Brooklyn-based artist Olalekan Jeyifous and the environmental art and architecture practice AD—WO will explore how Latinx and African Diasporic beliefs and rituals around the intelligence of the natural world can inform current ecological knowledge and environmental stewardship. The team will develop a series of interactive, multisensory sculptural installations across Brooklyn Botanic Garden that will encourage close listening and engagement with nature, drawing on AD—WO’s expertise in animism, or the belief that plants, landscapes, and natural forces possess agency, spirit, and consciousness.

Also collaborating with BBG’s horticulturists and Columbia University’s climate scientists, the fellows will research specific seasonal, environmental, and cultural conditions at BBG and their relationship to ancestral knowledge to develop site-responsive installations inspiring environmental awareness and care, addressing such broader concerns as pollinator collapse, soil health, microclimatic shifts, and water conservation. Interpreting community greening as a shared cultural, spiritual, and civic act, the project also seeks to reflect and amplify the rich gardening cultures of Brooklyn’s Diasporic communities.

Olalaken Jeyifous and Emanuel Admassu. Photo by Jeremy Weine.
2026 Artist
  • Man with T-shirt that says White Castle stands in front of outdoor greenery.

    Olalekan Jeyifous

    Olalekan Jeyifous is a Brooklyn-based artist whose work reimagines the intersections of architecture, community, and the environment. His art has been exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem, Guggenheim Bilbao, and the Museum of Modern Art, which holds his work in its permanent collection, along with the Art Institute of Chicago and SFMOMA. He is the recipient of the Silver Lion at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale, the 2024 Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, a United States Artists Fellowship, and two NYFA Fellowships. Jeyifous has held residencies at MacDowell, The Drawing Center’s Open Sessions, and the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, and was co-commissioned to design a monument to Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm for New York City’s She Built NYC initiative.

2026 Environmental Thinker Team
  • Man with green collared T-shirt standing with arms crossed in front of glass panels.

    Emanuel Admassu

    Principal-in-charge, AD—WO

    Emanuel Admassu is founding principal of AD—WO and assistant professor at Columbia University, GSAPP. As a practicing architect, urbanist, and educator, Admassu’s work explores the intersections of spatial justice and urbanism. He is currently working on a book that articulates the vibrant relations between animist cultural practices and contemporary urban systems. The key findings from this research will inform AD—WO’s contributions to the Nitze Fellowship.

  • Woman with shoulder-length hair and tan colored button up posing in front of building with glass and white paneling.

    Jen Wood

    Principal, AD—WO

    Jen Wood is a founding principal of AD—WO and a registered architect in the state of New York. Wood brings 17+ years of experience working for leading architecture practices in Melbourne and New York. For the Nitze Fellowship, she will facilitate overall project management, drawing from her extensive experience leading environmentally ambitious projects like the Spiral Tower in New York and the Wetlands Discovery Center in Edithvale, Australia.

  • Man with mustache and black shirt poses in front of greenery.

    David Zhang

    Environmental Researcher, AD—WO

    As the 2024 John Belle Travel Fellow, David Zhang conducted field-based research on three Indigenous watershed remediation projects across the United States and Mexico. Zhang brings experience in environmental research and fabrication to the Nitze Fellowship.

  • Woman with light-brown hair and white top posing in front of building with white paneling and glass windows.

    Katie Chizuko Solien

    Designer, AD—WO

    Katie Chizuko Solien's work and research is invested in the logistical underpinnings of carceral landscapes and the spatial practices that take place in spite of them. Chizuko Solien brings experience in critically examining entangled historical narratives and landscapes.

Image, top of page: Heidi Nitze