Rethinking Nature on Museo Madre website

The acceleration of global warming, the rising of the seas, the mass extinction of species, the recent weather anomalies, flows and seepages of toxicity impossible to contain – this unfolding predicament cannot be separated from the modern European paradigm that conceives of nature as a reservoir of resources to be freely exploited for profit. Rethinking Nature reveals how contemporary artistic practice is contributing to cultural and political processes that collectively rethink the ethical underpinnings of existence in the world, and underline the forms of interconnectedness that bind the entire planet. The project articulates experimental creative vocabularies that aim to produce alternative bodies of knowledge and social forms centered on political ecology. They demonstrate the urgency of building relationships on the basis of other values and call for radical change to address a cumulative crisis that has long existed in many geographies and that theorist Elizabeth Povinelli of Karrabing Film Collective today defines as “ancestral.” Indian writer Amitav Ghosh reminds us in his book The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable (2016), that ‘indigenous peoples have already experienced the end of the world and found ways to survive’, noting that farmers, fishermen, Inuit, indigenous peoples, forest peoples in India, have all experienced the climate crisis first hand and have already had to adapt, mainly through displacement and by finding new means of subsistence.

Artists:

Maria Thereza Alves (Brasil) / Giorgio Andreotta Calò (Italia) / Alfredo & Isabel Aquilizan (Pilipinas) / Adrián Balseca (Ecuador) / Gianfranco Baruchello (Italia) / Adriana Bustos (Argentina) / Sebastián Calfuqueo Aliste (Wallmapu/Chile) / Cao Minghao & Chen Jianjun (中国) / Jimmie Durham (USA) / Denise Ferreira da Silva & Arjuna Neuman (Brasil/ Deutschland) / Fernando García-Dory & INLAND (España) / Ximena Garrido-Lecca (Perú) / Gidree Bawlee – Kamruzzaman Shadhin – Salma Jamal Moushum (বাংলাদেশ) / Edgar Heap of Birds (Cheyenne and Arapaho nations) / Karrabing Film Collective & Elizabeth Povinelli (Emmi, Mentha, Wadjigiyn, Kiyuk and Malakmalak countries/USA) / Sam Keogh (Ireland) / Francois Knoetze (South Africa) / Elena Mazzi (Italia) / Ana Mendieta (Cuba) / Marzia Migliora (Italia) / Jota Mombaça & Iki Yos Piña Narváez (Brasil/Venezuela) / Sandra Monterroso (Guatemala) / Niccolò Moronato (Italia) / Tabita Rezaire & Amakaba (Guyane) / Zina Saro-Wiwa (United Kingdom/Nigeria) / Karan Shrestha (नेपाल) / Buhlebezwe Siwani (South Africa) / Yasmin Smith (Australia) / Ivano Troisi (Italia) / Tricky Walsh (Australia) / Zheng Bo (香港)