Looping: Ground
August 30 - December 14, 2025
Reception: Sept 7, 2-4 pm with
artist talks @3pm
photo walk through the arboretum @4pm
Looping: Ground brings together two photo-based installations that investigate our evolving relationship with the environment through the framework of structure. Drawing imagery from the Barnes Arboretum at Saint Joseph’s University, the artists, Maria Dumlao and Julianna Foster, explore the quiet rhythms, repetitions, and subtle transformations inherent in natural systems. Each installation utilizes photography to explore how these organic processes intersect with, inform, or resist the built environments that surround us. As photographers, the artists engage their medium as a tool for examining and challenging both visible and invisible structures that shape our perception of the world. Through layered imagery and spatial interventions, Looping: Ground invites viewers to consider the deep interdependence between human and ecological systems—and to imagine more adaptive, responsive ways of being, grounded in the intelligence of nature.
This exhibition is part of the annual 20/20 Philadelphia Photo Festival. Thank you to 20/20 Photo Festival and Unique Photo for their sponsorship.
Maria Dumlao
Maria Dumlao’s print, composed of vintage photographs of greater Philadelphia and imagery from the Barnes Arboretum, layers magnified views of a feeding dragonfly and native plants. Evoking the cyclical, interconnected roles of species across time, the work highlights nature’s patterns of cooperation and reciprocity. Nearby, red, green, and blue filters invite viewers to engage with the print—revealing and obscuring scenes to momentarily immerse them in the layered narratives of the natural world.
Julianna Foster
Julianna Foster’s work explores the tension between reality and imagination through a process-driven approach of printing, constructing, layering, and rephotographing. In Geographical Lore, she combines geological imagery with studio-built scenes, blending folklore and natural forms to create fictional landscapes that reflect memory and environmental change. Inspired by the Barnes Arboretum, she incorporates photographs of natural materials to connect her constructed imagery with the living world.
