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Human Nature
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The four celebrated artists featured in “Human Nature” explore the central questions surrounding what it means to be human: investigating our impact on the environment and the world around us, probing the social and economic systems that define our daily lives, and discovering how we relate and connect with one another. From her studio in Bogotá, Colombia to her exhibitions around the globe, artist Delcy Morelos emphasizes the urgent need for a deeper connection to the earth by using locally sourced soils and seeds to create monumental earthworks that immerse viewers in the natural world. Artist Josh Kline highlights the impact of technological advancement, class division, and the climate crisis through works of speculative fiction, including life-size, 3D-printed sculptures of office workers and neon-orange temporary housing tents filled with emergency supplies. In works of sculpture, installation, video, and drawing, artist Lenka Clayton playfully subverts commonplace tools and domestic rituals, working alongside her husband, children, and her Pittsburgh community to call attention to the beauty and wonder in the everyday. Deconstructing tropes of narrative storytelling, artist Sin Wai Kin creates a vibrant cast of characters and surreal worlds in highly crafted video works that disrupt seemingly fixed categories of human experience, such as gender, reality, and time. Through their critical yet hopeful reflections on the shared project of being human, these four artists emphasize our collective power to shape our communities, current realities, and coming futures.
Credits
Director: Ian Forster. Executive Producer: Tina Kukielski. Series Producer: Nick Ravich. Producer: Andrea Yu-Chieh Chung. Editor: Sebastián Díaz. Directors Of Photography: Santiago Jaimes, Andrew Kemp, Sebastián Lasaosa Rogers, Jane Macedo Yang. Associate Curator: Jurrell Lewis. Design & Animation: Momentist, Inc. Composer: Andrew Orkin.
Additional Cinematography: Mariam Dwedar, Michelle Hanks, Sean Hanley, Travis LaBella, Christoph Lerch, Michael T. Miller, Brandon Moran, Aaron Phillips, Fredrik Streiffert, Alejandro Toro. Assistant Camera: Hugo Cabezas, Jules Rico, Giselle Turner. Drone Operator: Santiago Gutiérrez. Colombia Field Producer: Natalia Agudelo Campillo.
Translator: Isabella Morelli Avilán. Archival Producer: Leah Ford. Location Sound: Nick Carignan, Alejandro Castillo, Joe Harris, Billy Mantani, Kelly Roofner, Fivel Rothberg, Roberto Sánchez, Teresa-Esmeralda Sanchez. Production Assistants: Esteban Sarui Morelo Blanco, Santiago Villanueva.
Additional Art21 Staff: Makda Amdetsyon, Lauren Barnett, Hannah DeGarmo, Lolita Fierro, Grace LeCates, Emma Nordin, Jessica Svenson, Noor Tamari, Nora Wimmer.
Interns: Candice Cirilo, Emma Kanne, Billie Lam, Asante Marie Owusu-Brafi, Aarya Silwal, Maria Syville, Emilia Copeland Titus.
Video Post-Production Service: Cut + Measure. Video Post-Production Producer: Alex Laviola. Colorist: Chris Ramey. Online & Conform: David Gauff. Post-Production Coordinator: Mary Grace Duffy. Audio Post-Production Service: Post Romantic. Re-Recording Mixer & Sound Editor: Gisela Fullà-Silvestre. Assistant Sound Editor: Dan Weisselberg. Audio Description & Captions: Sasha Hecht, Andre Kelman. Quality Control: Adam Stout. Narration: Louise Eliasof. Additional Music: Trey Toy. Additional Video Editor: Regina Spurlock. Additional Animation: Christian Mroczka. Assistant Editors: Isabella Morelli Avilán, Stephanie Cen, Sarah Yi Fineman, Michelle Hanks. Legal Counsel: Donaldson Callif Perez.
Artwork Courtesy: Lenka Clayton, Josh Kline, Phillip Andrew Lewis, Delcy Morelos, Sin Wai Kin, Blindspot Gallery, Catharine Clark Gallery, Lisson Gallery, Marian Goodman Gallery, © 2026 Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Additional Artworks By: Caravaggio, Louise Bourgeois, Martin Creed, Frida Kahlo, Lu Zhi, Roman Ondak, Roula Partheniou, James Price, Man Ray, Leonardo da Vinci.
Archival Material: Associated Press, Carnegie Museum of Art, The Collection of Hong Kong Heritage Museum, Drag Coven, Geisler-Fotopress GmbH / Alamy Stock Photo, Miami Dade College’s Wolfson Archives, The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY, Reuters Screenocean, VCG via Getty Images.
Special Thanks: The Art21 Board of Trustees, Frank Benson, Andrew Cannon, Early Clayton, Otto Clayton, Jean Koch, Timothy Mohr, Evelyn Montileone, Jon Rubin, Daniel Scordio, The Time of Our Lives Cast and Crew, Samantha Wolf.
Filming Locations Provided By: Accelerator at Stockholm University, Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Canal Projects, Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Dia Art Foundation, LaGuardia Studio 3D Scanning & 3D Printing, Mudam Luxembourg, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, NYCAP3D, Provident Charter School Central, Pulitzer Arts Foundation, Sandy Smith Studio, Silverlens, Somerset House, Troy Hill Art Houses, Whitney Museum of American Art.
Series Created By: Susan Dowling, Susan Sollins.
Original Production Funding Provided By: The Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation, Lambent Foundation, Agnes Gund, Melony and Adam Lewis, National Endowment for the Arts, Teiger Foundation, Sarah Arison, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Dealer Tire, Arts, Equity, & Education Fund™, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, Elyse and Lawrence B. Benenson, Stephanie and Tim Ingrassia, Tim and Lauren Schrager Family Foundation.
This program is a production of Art21, Inc. which is solely responsible for its content.
©2026 Art21, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Dedicated to Sebastián Lasaosa Rogers
Closed captionsAvailable in English, German, Romanian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Italian
Through the Art21 Translation Project, multilingual audiences from around the globe can contribute translations, making Art21 films more accessible worldwide.
Interested in showing this film in an exhibition or public screening? To license this video please visit Licensing & Reproduction.
Delcy Morelos was born in 1967 in Tierralta, Colombia, and lives and works in Bogotá, Colombia. She received her BFA from La Escuela de Bellas Artes de Cartagena in 1991. Using materials drawn from the earth, such as pigment minerals, soil, and plant life, Morelos centers our relationship with the natural world, inviting a sense of harmony and dialogue with the environment around us. Across her paintings, sculptures, and multisensory installations, Morelos’s practice weaves together disparate histories and traditions: from Andean and Amazonian Indigenous cosmologies to the histories of violence and extraction in the Americas, using abstract forms and gestures to convey their impact on humanity and the earth.
Lenka Clayton was born in 1977 in Cornwall, England, and lives and works in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She received her BA from Central Saint Martins College of Art in 1999 and her MA from the National Film and Television School in 2006. Clayton’s practice is rooted in a close observation of the world around her, highlighting the myriad ways we record our lives and relationships, and create moments of magic through simple gestures and mundane materials. Making films by organizing strangers by age, creating sculptural installations of dangerous objects made child-safe, or installing exhibitions in the windows of local businesses, the artist draws inspiration from her community in Pittsburgh, her family, and the world around her. In doing so, Clayton creates a body of work that centers on the beauty of the everyday and the power of human connection.
Josh Kline was born in 1979 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and currently lives in New York City, New York. From 3D-printed sculptures of unemployed professionals in fields predicted to be eliminated by AI to a fictional commercial for Universal Basic Income to an immersive science-fiction installation set in a climate-refugee camp, Kline explores the impact of emerging technologies, widening class divides, and the looming threat of climate disaster on contemporary life. His works often present dystopic visions of the near future, where the consequences of political instability, the automation of human labor, and natural disasters have transformed life as we know it, engaging audiences in the project of imagining something better.
Sin Wai Kin was born in 1991 in Toronto, Canada, and lives and works in London, United Kingdom. The artist received their BA from Camberwell College of Arts in 2014 and their MA from the Royal College of Art, London in 2017. Drawing on diverse performance styles, such as drag, boy bands, newscasting, and sitcoms, Sin plays with genre conventions, narrative structures, and character tropes to reveal the cultural constructions at the heart of everyday experience. In an ongoing series of interconnected works, the artist has developed a cast of archetypal characters, each reflecting distinct relationships to fundamental concepts such as truth, identity, and change. Sin develops fictional worlds that explore the stories we tell about ourselves and our society, presenting more fluid possibilities for both.
Segments from “Human Nature”
“Human Nature” Educator Guide
Educator Guides provide information about selected artists and themes, questions for classroom discussions, and hands-on activities that provide students with a fundamental understanding of creative and critical thinking processes.
“There are so many ways that we split ourselves into binaries and categories, and actually, all of these things—all of these systems—are connected.”
Sin Wai Kin