Terrain Biennial: Hillary Johnson: The Listening Fence | October 1 - December 6, 2025
Artist Reception: Sunday, October 26, 2025, 3:00 - 6:00 PM
Please join us afterwards for a private cocktail hour at the Quincy Street Distillery
Exhibition Dates: October 1 - December 6, 2025
Exhibition on view: 24/7 on the Riverside Arts Center's back fence
The Riverside Arts Center is pleased to present The Listening Fence, an installation by Hillary Johnson as part of the Terrain Biennial. Please join us for a reception for the artist on Sunday, October 26th from 3 - 6pm. The exhibition is on view 24/7 on the Riverside Arts Center's back fence through December 6, 2025. This artwork is also part of the Freeark Gallery and Sculpture Garden exhibition, In the Circle of Melissa Potter.
The Listening Fence is an evolving, participatory outdoor installation that invites the public into a shared act of remembrance, reflection, and reciprocity. Installed across the back fence of the Riverside Arts Center's sculpture garden, the work weaves together ephemeral materials—handmade paper, thread, image, wind, and intention—with community participation and poetic ritual.
The Listening Fence consists of a series of paper strips handmade by the artist using natural fibers and dyes, tied with thread, gathered along the rear fence. These “whispers”—short reflections, prayers, or messages—are created by the public in response to a simple invitation: What would you like to release, remember, or offer to the world? Visitors may leave their messages in a small drop-box or write and contribute directly by tying them to the hanging cords. Over time, these paper pieces weather, fade, and dissolve, an intentional and poetic element of the work —honoring the cycles of impermanence, care, and quiet presence. Threads connecting the messages weave between fence slats, creating a luminous, living portal of collective breath.
–Hillary Johnson
Hillary Johnson with The Listening Fence, 2025, Riverside Arts Center
Hillary Johnson is a multidisciplinary artist who works in photography, video, handmade books, and immersive multimedia installations. She’s interested in the tension between heartache and beauty; grief and joy; and longing and belonging that underpin the human condition. She is the creator of, “The Waters We Swim In,” a global movement for self-love and compassion, grounded in a process of transformative water-based portrait sessions that invite subjects to feel greater kindness and compassion for themselves while recognizing their place in the great pattern of things.
Johnson holds an MFA in Photography from Columbia College Chicago where she served as a Curatorial and Education Assistant at the Museum of Contemporary Photography for three years. She currently holds the position of Teaching Scholar in Photography at the University of Notre Dame. Johnson is a recipient of an Albert P. Weisman Award, and Thall-Mulvany Awards for her work creating immersive installations that explore ways in which art and science may be a critical piece of how we create a more loving and compassionate world. Her work has been featured in the 2nd Quanzhou International Image Biennale at the Fujulian Huanguang Photography Art Museum, Hüten Gallery in Shanghai, China, Image Union, Pasadena Photo Arts, The Chicago Reader, National Public Radio, NBC News, A Photo Editor, and Frontrunner Magazine. Her works have been exhibited across the United States and internationally.
Terrain Exhibitions brings contemporary art where it is most needed and least expected: yards, front steps, windowsills, porches, and rooftops in neighborhoods worldwide. Terrain hosts the Terrain Biennial, a public art festival that builds community by creating space for public art through relationships between artists and their neighbors. The Biennial creates accessible contemporary art experiences available to the public, 24/7 for the duration of the festival.
View more projects online at www.terrainexhibitions.org
Note: Hillary Johnson's installation at the Riverside Arts Center has an extended viewing period through December 6, 2025.
