Anika Todd

💥💥📢📢 I'm working on a sculpture for the waterfront for this round of counterpublic! What a dream to be making a site work for my favorite place in St. Louis. Seriously honored to be part of this artist line up 💥💥 RIVER WORKS Stretching along the edge of downtown St. Louis and anchored by the Gateway Arch, the Mississippi Riverfront will host over a dozen site-responsive works that reconnect the city to the river. Anchored by major new public commissions by artists Glenn Ligon and Marguerite Humeau, the works extend across post-industrial sites, waterfront pathways, and a former aquarium activated by Max Hooper Schneider. Emerging technologies come to the fore with Li Yi-Fan, Alice Bucknell, Cooper Jacoby. COUNTERPUBLIC, is a triennial exhibition based in St. Louis, Missouri, and one of the largest public art exhibitions in the United States, is pleased to announce the 48 participating artists, duos, and collectives gathered from around the world for its third edition, Coyote Time. On view September 12–December 12, 2026, Counterpublic 2026 will present ambitious new commissions and historical reinterpretations furthering their mission to reimagine art’s role in public life. Unfolding across five key sites shaped by St. Louis’s historical and civic conditions, Coyote Time brings together artists engaging urgent issues including education, climate, technology and immigration. The title, Coyote Time, draws from Alice Bucknell’s 2026 triennial commission, a video game set within St. Louis’ City Museum, and refers to the brief moment in gameplay that allows a player to decide between leaping forward or returning to safety. For its 2026 edition, curated by Jordan Carter, Raphael Fonseca, Stefanie Hessler, Nora N. Khan, and Wanda Nanibush, Counterpublic invites you to inhabit Coyote Time, framing uncertainty as a space for experimentation, risk, and possibility. @counterpublic 🌀🌀🌀

excerpt from a two-channel video essay 𝘛𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 this work was made from a series of balloon camera experiments and writings from the semester in @landartsoftheamericanwest excited to have this work, which looks at the ethics of viewing from above, included in the @snakehousevt film festival next week, as part of a series of films that think through the politics of the lens

stills from 2-channel video 𝘛𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 a short essay connected to this video work, is published in new issue of @swcontemporary ! link in bio ### “Through a tethered balloon camera, Anika Todd surveys Nevada’s intertwined histories of speed, surveillance, and war.” The essay traces the history of Wendover air-force and development of the Norden Bombsight, the tool used to drop the atomic bomb.

This semester I taught a site class on the Mississippi. Moving between the floodwall, the river, and the studio we thought about rivers, wild vs. controlled space, and how landscapes hold stories and histories. They made beautiful thoughtful work, thought i would share here, Thank you to the class 🌀🌀 1- Mississippi River just south of Gateway Arch 2- Installation of student sculptures on the river front 3- @adam._deutsch material exploration thinking about distance 4- @adam._deutsch sculptural installation thinking about distance 5- @pandoras_tupperware sketchbook of site visit 6- @pandoras_tupperware crochet hook made for river 7- Carol’s wind expeiriment that found sun and sound 8- @leafdirt "Figure/Funerary Shroud" 9- @leafdirt "Projection of Archaeological Material Discovered Along Mississippi River and Archaeologist's Log" 10- Becks "a tool for gathering" 11- Becks "instructions for gathering" 12- @kieraesullivan - a boat made of cross-sections and light 13- Alejandra - proposal for site intervention 14- @hh3ra - "Obscura" 15- @hh3ra - "Sun Seeking" 3:14min video 16- @maxwellius_spencerus - barrel installation to hold the river and the sound of it 17- @maxwellius_spencerus - river map/wings 18- Class site visit to the Alton Lock and Dam. big thank you to @michaelrallen for leading us on a historical tour of the riverfront and @leveye for being honorable TA! @washu_samfox_engage for supporting the course to work offsite! and @land_arts for the semester of inspiration 🌀

“The Wendover Historic Airfield Museum says it was for American glory. But when I look at the faces of the smiling pilots in the archival photos, I read something more like escape. Not in a nationalistic sense, but a personal hunger—a desire to shed an earthbound weight.“ 💪 Anika Todd’s video essay, Tether, questions what is lost when a place is understood from above without maintaining a connection to the ground it surveys. Watch, listen, or read at the link in our bio.

Tether is a video essay that began as a simple experiment: a camera lifted into the air over the Wendover Salt Flats by a weather balloon, tethered to the ground by a string. The video essay situates this footage within the history of Wendover, where the bombsight for the atomic bomb was developed during World War II, and examines how framing operates in both military and artistic contexts. At its core, Tether challenges the idea of a “god’s-eye view” as neutral or objective, asking what is lost when a place is understood from above without maintaining a connection to the ground it surveys. 💪 Anika Todd (b. 1992, Boston, MA) is an artist and educator whose work investigates Western principles of property that authorize human control of earth and sky. Todd earned a BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin, and currently teaches sculpture at the Sam Fox School of Art and Design in MO. They have created site-specific outdoor works for Sweet Pass Sculpture Park, TX (2024) and NONstndrd, MO (2025), and have presented solo exhibitions at Erin Cluley Projects, TX (2024); Lydian Stater, NY (2023); and Flux Factory, NY (2021). Todd has participated in residencies nationally and internationally, including the NARS Foundation (2020) and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2019). They received an Austin Cultural Arts Council Award in 2019 and were a finalist for the NYFA Architecture/Environmental Structures/Design Award in 2022.

Lock 27 🔵 Situated in the historical flood basin of the Mississippi River, Lock 27 reflects on the unseen rhythm of the 27th lock and dam, located 10 miles upstream from the site. The piece simulates the experience of passing through the lock on a small fishing boat, capturing the gradual 18-foot shift in water level, where movement is so subtle it feels like stillness. Using mapping data from real-time barge traffic, the sculpture’s motor moves a chair and a small piece of blue glass in tune with the barge movement, reflecting the mechanical rhythm of the now-controlled river that once fluctuated across the American Bottom.

The sculpture Lock 27 thinks through the experience of passing through a Mississippi shipping lock on a small fishing boat. The installation uses the height of a 16-foot decommissioned sand bunker to describe the slow monumental shift in the water level of the lock, recreating a movement that is so subtle it feels like stillness. I collaborated with @lucasstagram to develop a code-based system that connects the sculpture to the real-time water level in the lock. He created a system that tracks barge movements using public lock APIs and vessel traffic data, translating their northbound and southbound passages into operational instructions for the sculpture. The work is located on the American Bottom, a landscape that was formerly a watery delta of the Mississippi. Once a part of a river basin that flooded naturally, the sculpture looks to reconnect the site to the altered river, creating a tether that links to the water’s now mechanized rhythm. Come see this Saturday from 3-6 pm for the opening @nationalbuildingartcenter @stndrdexhibitions

Last December, I moved my tiny house to a sculpture park in Dallas to live on-site while developing a site-responsive work. The resulting installation, 𝘋𝘢𝘳𝘬 𝘚𝘵𝘶𝘥𝘺, takes the form of a historic light tower native to the region. Triggered by a sound sensor, the sculpture's light flips to complete darkness each time a train passes. Focusing from sight to sound, the viewer is asked to consider the fallacy of light as security, contemplating instead what can be found in the darkness. Some thoughts from my time in the park… “I have become suspicious of light. Light has historically been used as an arm of surveillance, floodlights introduced to defend against crime after an act of violence. As if light itself could prevent wrong-doing. This superstition is repeated in the early stories of electricity and the Moon Tower, the promise that light would transform the night, stamping out all evil and indecency. I have been thinking about the safety of the dark. I have always found refuge in post-industrial spaces like Sweet Pass. Nothing is being sold to me here. And there is no one here to consume me. But I also have fear in this space – I feel vulnerable in my little house, a small body with no real skills to protect myself. But I have been balancing these two throughout, and most often the refuge outweighs the fear. I keep choosing to live in my house on the street; safety in the dark is a practice. Thank you to @sweetpasssculpturepark for creating time and space for artists to work in place~~

So moving to come across this silent protest organized by elders in Florence; after attending one just a week ago in my hometown of Boston. It is the same message across the world. Ceasefire now. Free free Palestine.