Curated by Sharmila Wood
Artists: Ackroyd and Harvey, Lhola Amira, Arahmaiani, Sayan Chanda, Hylozoic/Desires (Himali Singh Soin & David Soin Tappeser), lololol, Ana Mendieta, Zarina Muhammad, Patrina Mununggurr, Pauline Oliveros, Yoko Ono, Tabita Rezaire, Eric-Paul Riege, Cecilia Vicuña, Katie West, and Zheng Bo
Actions for the Earth: Art, Care & Ecology is a traveling exhibition that considers kinship, healing, and restorative interventions as artistic practices and strategies to foster a deeper consciousness of our interconnectedness with the earth.
A recent overlapping of worldwide crises related to ongoing climate change, entrenched social inequity, and renewed concerns over public health has underscored the need for complex approaches. It has become necessary to assume global responsibilities while caring for our local environment; to find new antidotes to oppressive structures of power; to grasp nature, health, and sustainability as intertwined.
For decades, artists have sought greater understanding of this interconnectedness, drawing from multiple disciplines beyond established art practices. Actions for the Earthpresents the work of eighteen artists and collectives who foreground reciprocity and exchange in their work by sharing participatory interventions, healing practices, ecology and science, as well as ancient beliefs. The artists create space for honoring ancestors, the significance of Indigenous knowledges, and engage in fantastical speculation through science-fiction and organic, digital, and spiritual network sciences.
Actions for the Earth is a resource for current times, reminding us that we are connected within a constellation of living networks, inseparable from the earth. The exhibition emphasizes learning, care, and intimacy, inviting its publics to participate in instruction-based meditation and deep listening among other actions. During the tour, projects will generate site-specific exchanges between the artists, the environment, and local communities, growing and changing over time.
Actions for the Earth: Art, Care & Ecology is a traveling exhibition curated by Sharmila Wood and produced by Independent Curators International (ICI), New York. It is the result of a series of programs, pioneered with the support of the Hartfield Foundation, aimed at providing opportunities to alumni of ICI’s Curatorial Intensive as they move through the stages of their career, and reflecting ICI’s commitment to fostering and championing new curatorial voices who will shape the future of the field. Actions for the Earth is made possible with the generous support of ICI’s Board of Trustees and International Forum.
The presentation at Contemporary at Blue Star has been organized in collaboration with Jacqueline Saragoza McGilvray.
