Multi-disciplinary artist Gala Porras-Kim’s practice questions how knowledge is acquired and tests the potential for artworks and objects to function as meaning-makers outside of traditional museum contexts. For her exhibition, A Hand in Nature, which originated at MCA Denver, Porras-Kim extends lines of questioning into conservation, preservation, and care to the broader natural world and lived environment. The artworks on view distill natural processes into sculptures, paintings and drawings that will grow, evolve or degrade throughout the span of the exhibition. From sculptures rendered with salt-saturated concrete or copal resin wetted with local rainwater, to paintings created from slow drips of water drawing from the museum’s humidity and projections from light refractions off of brass panels, Porras-Kim’s work imagines what might be possible if natural forces and phenomena had the agency to self-determine.