Julie Poitras Santos papers, 2014-2018

Full finding aid (pdf)

Collection Scope and Content

The collection contains a postcard from a series of ritual walks, as well as the program for Making Migration Visible, which Santos co-curated.

Biographical/Historical Note

Julie Poitras Santos’ site-specific practice takes many forms, including video, installation, writing and public projects that include a walking component. The relationship between site, story and mobility fuels a wide range of research and production, including the relationship between natural histories, myth and individual story; walking as a form of listening to site; and material agency in an age of climate change. Poitras Santos’ solo and collaborative work has been exhibited at the Institute for Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art; Urban Institute of Contemporary Art, Michigan; the Centre for Contemporary Culture in Barcelona, Spain; Reykjanesbaer Art Museum in Iceland; and at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, among others. She has attended residencies and created performances and projects in the United States, Sweden, Spain, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Iceland, including residencies at the European Ceramic Work Center, in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands (2005), Valparaiso in Mojacar, Spain (2006) and NES Artists Residency in Skagastrond, Iceland (2009).

Her work has received support from the Maine Arts Commission among others, and with the help of a Kindling Fund Grant in 2016 she initiated Platform Projects/Walks, a platform for curating walking artworks within local communities. Poitras Santos has taught sculpture at Bowdoin College, Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, and the University of Colorado at Boulder. She lived in Barcelona, Spain for three years (2004-2007) and worked as the Artistic Director of the art residency program Can Serrat, in Montserrat National Park. She currently teaches in the MFA Program at Maine College of Art, and lives in Portland, Maine. Poitras Santos holds two MFAs, one in visual arts from the University of Colorado at Boulder, 2000, and a second in poetry from the Stonecoast Creative Writing program, 2013. She received a BS from Tufts University in 1990. Additionally, she has trained in the martial art of Aikido since 1991.