LAUREN BON
Artist | Los Angeles, California
Founder, Metabolic Studio
Lauren Bon is an artist whose long-duration practice works at the scale of land, water, infrastructure, and the social systems through which they are organized. Her work uses performative action, agriculture, water systems, material experimentation, sound, and civic infrastructure to intervene in and make visible the relationships that shape a place.
Metabolic Studio is the operational framework for Bon’s practice, enabling works to unfold over years and sometimes decades and at the ecological and civic scale of the systems they engage.
Bon’s major works include Not A Cornfield (2005–06), which transformed a thirty-two-acre industrial brownfield in downtown Los Angeles into a cornfield for one agricultural cycle; One Hundred Mules Walking the Los Angeles Aqueduct (2013), a 240-mile performative action reconnecting Los Angeles with the source of its water on the centenary of the Los Angeles Aqueduct; and Bending the River (2012–ongoing), a long-duration work using Los Angeles’s first private water right to redirect water from the Los Angeles River watershed for beneficial use in the historic core of the city.
SELECTED LONG-DURATION WORKS
IOU / AgH₂O: Payahuunadü (Owens Valley), California | 2007–ongoing
A long-duration body of work examining the material, ecological, and social relationship between Los Angeles and Payahuunadü. Works and actions have included IOU H₂O, the IOU Bank of Trust and Time, IOU Garden, food production and exchange, sound and theatre works, material experimentation, radio, residencies, and sustained relationships in the Owens Valley.
Bending the River | Los Angeles | 2012–ongoing
A civic-scale artwork using Los Angeles’s first private water right to redirect up to 106 acre-feet of water annually from the Los Angeles River watershed for beneficial use in the historic core of the city. The work asks how the river might be reconnected to its historic floodplain while proposing the possibility of a citizens’ utility.
Meandros | Los Angeles | 2025–ongoing
A distributed artwork that undevelops sections of Los Angeles’s asphalted ground, restoring permeability to the urban landscape. Using soil and material displaced by landslides and connecting these sites to water, Meandros creates a constellation of living grounds across the city. Supported by Bon’s 2025 Guggenheim Fellowship.
One Hundred Mules Walking the Los Angeles Aqueduct | 2013
A month-long performative action in which one hundred mules traveled the 240-mile Los Angeles Aqueduct between the Eastern Sierra and Los Angeles, reconnecting the city with the source of its water on the centenary of the aqueduct.
Not A Cornfield | Los Angeles | 2005–06
A durational work that transformed a thirty-two-acre industrial brownfield in downtown Los Angeles into a cornfield for one agricultural cycle.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS & PROJECTS
2026
Ecotechnics at Beall, Beall Center for Art + Technology, UC Irvine, Irvine, CA — group exhibition
The Water That Wanders: Tears, Teas and Tides, Governors Island, New York — with Betsy Damon and Mary Mattingly
2025
TREES NEVER END AND HOUSES NEVER END, Sky High Farm Biennial, Germantown, NY — group exhibition curated by Dan Colen
Into the Time Horizon, Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV — group exhibition curated by Apsara DiQuinzio with Kolin Perry
2024
Concrete is Fluid, Honor Fraser Gallery, Los Angeles, CA — Getty PST ART
Portable Wetland of Southern California, Brackish Water, California State University, Dominguez Hills, Carson, CA — Getty PST ART
Great Vibration, Energy Fields: Vibrations of the Pacific, Fulcrum Arts at Chapman University, Orange, CA — Getty PST ART
Artists Need to Create on the Same Scale That Society Has the Capacity to Destroy, Nature on Notice: Contemporary Art and Ecology, LACMA at Charles White Elementary School Gallery, Los Angeles, CA — Getty PST ART
2023
The Smallest Sea with the Largest Heart, Desert X, Coachella Valley, CA
Underland, PRJCT LA, Los Angeles, CA
2022
Bending the River, Pitzer College, Claremont, CA — solo exhibition, curated by Robert Crouch and Ciara Ennis
Mining Photography: The Ecological Footprint of Image Production, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, Germany
Artists Need to Create on the Same Scale That Society Has the Capacity to Destroy, Singing in Unison, TOTAH, New York — curated by Phong Bui
Deep Ecology in the Cognitive Capitalocene, SFSIA / The Brooklyn Rail, New York
2021–22
Mitchell Visiting Professor, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Overground Resistance, frei_raum Q21 / MuseumsQuartier Wien, Vienna, Austria
2019
Artists Need to Create on the Same Scale That Society Has the Capacity to Destroy: Mare Nostrum, collateral event of the 58th International Art Exhibition — La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy
Occupy Colby: Artists Need to Create on the Same Scale That Society Has the Capacity to Destroy, Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, ME
Portable Wetland for Southern California, Various Small Fires, Los Angeles, CA
2018
Voices of Detroit, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD), Detroit, MI
Bending the River Back Into the City, Art Basel, Basel, Switzerland — Art and Politics panel
2017
Building 6 Opening Exhibition, MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA
Artists Need to Create on the Same Scale That Society Has the Capacity to Destroy: Occupy Mana, Mana Contemporary, Jersey City, NJ
2016
The Catch, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA
2015
Liminal Infrastructure, Chicago Humanities Festival / DePaul Art Museum, Chicago, IL
Saving the West, Art + Environment Conference, Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV — with Helen and Newton Harrison
IOU Theatre, Lancaster Museum of Art and History, Lancaster, CA
2013
AgH₂O, George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY
Optics Division, Les Rencontres d’Arles, Arles, France
One Hundred Mules Walking the Los Angeles Aqueduct, subsequently presented in After the Aqueduct, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), Los Angeles, CA
SELECTED AWARDS & APPOINTMENTS
Guggenheim Fellowship | 2025
Mitchell Visiting Professor, School of the Art Institute of Chicago | 2021–22