Rights of Nature: Art and Ecology in the Americas
Artists: Allora & Calzadilla, Eduardo Abaroa, Ala Plástica, Darren Almond, Marcos Avila Forero, Amy Balkin, Subhankar Banerjee, Mabe Bethônico, Ursula Biemann & Paulo Tavares, Center for Land Use Interpretation, Minerva Cuevas, Jimmie Durham, Harun Farocki, GIAP: Grupo de Investigación en Arte y Política (with Beatriz Aurora), Paulo Nazareth, The Otolith Group, Fernando Palma Rodríguez, Claire Pentecost, Abel Rodríguez, Miguel Angel Rojas, Walter Solón Romero.
Curated by TJ Demos and Alex Farquharson, with Irene Aristizábal.
Runaway global warming, environmental destruction and mass species extinction are all consequences of our fraught relationship with nature. Earth has been seen as an infinite supply of natural resources to be freely exploited for profit. Climate change caused by human behaviour has placed all life on the planet at risk – including our own.
The artists in this exhibition reflect on our current environmental crisis – economic, political and cultural, as well as ecological. The rights of nature to flourish free from human destruction are increasingly recognised in new environmental laws. Bolivia and Ecuador have recently enshrined the rights of Mother Earth in their legal systems.
North and South America, in particular, are sites of intense activity, linking ecologically-concerned artists, political activists and indigenous people to new legal initiatives. Recent philosophical developments are also rethinking the relationship between human and non-human life. Rights of Nature is a journey across the Americas, through the work of twenty artists, across all four of Nottingham Contemporary’s galleries. The Amazon, the Andes, the Artic and the Gulf of Mexico are among the ecological regions explored.
Nottingham Contemporary
Weekday Cross, Nottingham, UK
http://www.nottinghamcontemporary.org/art/rights-nature