May 23 – June 24

Morton Fine Art is pleased to present an exhibition of ink on paper drawings from an ongoing eco-queer focused series by Johannesburg, South Africa-based transdisciplinary visual artist Hannelie Coetzee. Bringing together recent drawings—a medium Coetzee has freshly pursued since the pandemic – Eco Queer Creature Series focuses on the artist’s fluid embrace and trenchant application of drawing. Wedding her engaged, direct observation of wildlife with deep research into zoomorphism and queer ecology, the exhibition rethinks ways of being (human) through actual ways of (animals) living, viewing animal life as another nation on par with human life. Coetzee’s second solo exhibition with the gallery, Eco Queer Creature Serieswill be on view from May 23rd to June 24th, 2025, at Morton Fine Art’s Washington, D.C. location (52 O St NW #302).

Returning to drawing for the first time since childhood, Coetzee’s ink on paper works are propulsive, almost electric renderings of queer behavior in a suite of animals: hyenas, wildebeests, zebras, warthogs, giraffes and foxes. Informed by a foundational reading of eco-queer theory and art, Coetzee’s first steps were very much to become knowledgeable and sensitive to other ways of being—to being otherwise—as demonstrated and embodied by animals. Coetzee shares glimpses of giraffes necking and warthogs bounding about, intently observing them in their own social worlds. Long engaged in an environmentally-focused, research-based and site-specific practice, Coetzee’s work in drawing finds the artist in a free and improvisational, albeit still decidedly rigorous mode. Freezing glimpses of queer intimacy in animal life, the drawings on view wordlessly express one of queer ecology’s main tenets, demonstrating an often contested matter with just a few stained pools and lashes of whipping ink lines: that the purported “unnaturalness” of human queerness is rebutted by common, everyday queer behavior in the natural world.

Opening reception: Saturday, May 24th, 2025 from 2-4pm

Gallery hours: Tuesday – Saturday by appointment