Mary Mattingly

Mary Mattingly is a visual artist whose practice centers on public food access, ecological systems, and the governance of shared space. She is the founder of Swale, a floating edible landscape built on a barge that docked at public piers across New York City's five boroughs. Operating under waterways common law rather than public land regulations, Swale made free fresh food available to anyone, and contributed directly to the creation of the Foodway at Concrete Plant Park in the Bronx: the first space in over a century where New York City Parks has permitted public foraging in a public park. Her work has been exhibited at Storm King Art Center, the International Center of Photography, Seoul Art Center, the Brooklyn Museum, Barbican Gallery, deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, and the Palais de Tokyo. Mattingly has received support from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, James L. Knight Foundation, the Harpo Foundation, NYFA, the Jerome Foundation, and the Art Matters Foundation. Her work has appeared in Aperture, Art in America, Artforum, Sculpture Magazine, The New York Times, Le Monde, The New Yorker, and PBS's Art21, and is included in Henry Sayre's A World of Art (Pearson, 8th ed.).