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The Philadelphia-based artists Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib have been collaborators since 2008. They are recipients of several honored awards including a 2015 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, Pew Fellowships in the Arts and Fellowships from CFEVA and Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Their work has been widely exhibited both domestically and abroad at venues including, Fondazione MAXXI (Rome), New Media Gallery (Vancouver), The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), UCLA Hammer Museum, PS1/MoMA, Philadelphia Museum of Art and Arizona State University Art Museum. They have been artists-in-residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts, the Banff Centre, Marble House Project and the Millay Colony for Arts. Matthew Suib is co-founder of Greenhouse Media and Nadia Hironaka serves as a professor of film and video and studio arts at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Hironaka & Suib are represented by Locks Gallery. The couple, along with their daughter and two cats reside in South Philly.

From 2007-2010, as an extension of their artistic practice, Hironaka and Suib founded Screening. Philadelphia’s first gallery dedicated to the presentation of innovative and challenging works on video and film, Screening was a project devoted to expanding access to these media and exploring the influence of moving image culture on our understanding and experience of the world. Screening’s program has included solo exhibitions of work by internationally renowned artists including Joan Jonas, Johan Grimonprez, Takeshi Murata, Mark Lewis, Kelly Richardson, Pat O’Neill, Valérie Mréjen and others.

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2025, public film installation, 16mm film and UHD video, continuous loop

Produced over the course of a year working with an amazing team at Philadelphia’s Office of Immigrant Affairs - The Philadelphians is a series of film portraits shot on 16mm and video projected 360° around the LOVE Park Welcome Center. Together, the films comprise a portrait of the City’s global roots and community values through images and words of everyday Philadelphians who make their neighborhoods and the city a better place. The films are a reminder, at a time when many would deny immigrants a place in our communities, campuses, workplaces and even History books, that Philadelphia has always been and will always be a city of immigrants.

Portrait participants include Philadelphians who are building up and sustaining their neighborhoods, communities, and city. They include a public servant, educator, pastor, baker entrepreneur, community leaders and others working with the artists to shape the film through image and text pulled from interviews that touch on culture, heritage, history, as well as their individual and shared identities as Philadelphians. 

Woven into the portrait films are archival film images of immigrant communities, and original footage from a series of creative workshops, picturing the hands of immigrant and second-generation Philadelphians making traditional and contemporary crafts. These hands are engaged in creative work that strengthens community connections and enriches the cultural fabric of Philadelphia.

The Philadelphians  was the second project from Forman Arts Initiative (FAI) and Mural Arts Philadelphia’s (MAP) Public Works program, a residency program that embeds artists within Philadelphia’s civic agencies. 


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Field Companion

4k video with sound, 2021
Running time: 20:40

Set in a microcosmic forest, the film is based loosely on the pine barrens that dot Southern New Jersey near the home of Hironaka & Suib. Like many, the duo found refuge and solace

In Field Companion, the forest has been condensed and transplanted to a terrarium in the artists’ studio. Twelve cubic feet of pines, shrubs, ferns, moss, fungus and carnivorous plants are reflected infinitely in the terrarium’s mirrored walls and captured with a motion-controlled camera and specialized macro lens that dramatically shift the scale and perspective of this miniature landscape.

Living dwellers—snails, slugs, and insects inhabit the miniature ecosystem, accompanied by digitally rendered part-animal, part-human creatures. Through their conversations and interactions, they look forward, investigating progressive methods of sustainability. The film also touches upon the notion of forest-bathing, the Japanese practice of exploring the natural environment through our senses.

Field Companion was co-commissioned by Rowan University Art Gallery, Locust Projects and the New Jersey Council on the Arts.