Marek Ranis

Marek Ranis is a Professor and Sculpture Area Coordinator in the Department of Art & Art History at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. His work bridges artistic practice with environmental and anthropological research, focusing on climate change, the Anthropocene, and sociopolitical phenomena. He has been awarded grants such as the UNESCO Aschberg Fellowship and the NC Artist Fellowship Award.

Since 2003, Ranis has led the artistic-research project 'Albedo,' investigating climate change through multidisciplinary collaborations in regions like the Arctic, Iceland, and Australia. In 2017, he was appointed Curator at Large at the Anchorage Museum for his Arctic-focused work. His research includes a 2019 NSF-funded project on geological climate impacts, collaborating with Professors Missy Eppes and Russ Keanini. He also contributed to the 2024 'Mare Liberum, Reimagined' project with Maja Godlewska, sponsored by the Getty Foundation.

Ranis’s work is exhibited globally in over 100 shows and held in public collections across North America and Europe. His artistic practice integrates sculpture, installation, painting, photography, and video to explore human-environmental interactions, including topics like migration, linguistics, and Nordic societal identity.