Actions for the Earth: Art, Care & Ecology: Block Museum - Northwestern University
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Actions for the Earth: Art, Care & Ecology

January 26-July 7, 2024
Main and Alsdorf Galleries
Lhola Amira, IRMANDADE: The Shape of Water in Pindorama, 2018-2020, HD video, single channel sound, film still. Image courtesy of SMAC Gallery, copyright Lhola Amira.

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 Earth presents 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.

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, Eric-Paul Riege, Tabita Rezaire, Cecilia Vicuña, Katie West, and Zheng Bo

Lhola Amira, IRMANDADE: The Shape of Water in Pindorama, 2018-2020

Lhola Amira, IRMANDADE: The Shape of Water in Pindorama, 2018-2020

HD video, single channel sound, film still. Image courtesy of SMAC Gallery, copyright Lhola Amira.
Hylozoic/Desires (Himali Singh Soin & David Soin Tappeser), As Grand As What, 2021

Hylozoic/Desires (Himali Singh Soin & David Soin Tappeser), As Grand As What, 2021

3 channel performance video; color, stereo sound, video still from As Grand As What (2021). Image courtesy of the artist.
Katie West, Clearing, 2019

Katie West, Clearing, 2019

installation view, TarraWarra Museum of Art. Photo: Andrew Curtis. Courtesy the artist.
Tabita Rezaire, Premium Connect, 2017,

Tabita Rezaire, Premium Connect, 2017

video with LED glow, still from Premium Connect (2017). Courtesy of the artist and Goodman Gallery, South Africa
Zheng Bo, Ecosensibility Exercises, installation view, 2021

Zheng Bo, Ecosensibility Exercises, installation view, 2021

Gropius Bau, Berlin. Photo: Eike Walkenhorst. Courtesy the artist; Gropius Bau; Edouard Malingue Gallery.
Arahmaiani, Memory of Nature, 2013

Arahmaiani, Memory of Nature, 2013

Singapore. Courtesy the artist.
Hylozoic/Desires (Himali Singh Soin & David Soin Tappeser), As Grand As What, 2021

Hylozoic/Desires (Himali Singh Soin & David Soin Tappeser), As Grand As What, 2021

3 channel performance video; color, stereo sound, video still from As Grand As What (2021). Image courtesy of the artist

Exhibition Credits

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.

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