IMBALANCE
Artists: Kamila Chomicz, Cecylia Malik, Lara Almarcegui, Sergio Belinchón, Julius Von Bismark, Lúa Coderch, Mujeres Creando, Joan Fontcuberta, Philipp Fröhlich, Chus García Fraile, John Gerrard, Máximo González, Andreas Gursky, Federico Guzmán, Antoni Muntadas, Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba, Oligatega Numeric, Perejaume, Marjetica Potrč, Xavier Ribas, Anri Sala, Allan Sekula, Jennifer Steinkamp, Superflex, Manuel Vázquez
Curated by Blanca de la Torre, Imbalance aims to provoke reflections on the potential of art as a useful path for reviewing our conceptions regarding some present-day environmental problems. The exhibition’s approach implies the understanding that our conceptions of natural fact and reality have to be re-examined, on the basis that our current situation of “ecocide” results — either directly or indirectly— from the way in which we have instrumentalized our natural environment.
The structure of the exhibition at the Laznia Centre for Contemporary Art consists of four conceptual chapters: 1. Domestication of Landscape, Politics of Land and other Dialectics of Nature; 2. Environmental Catastrophes as a Consequence of the Capitalocene; 3. Looking at the Global South; 4. Management of Resources and Consumerism Habits. While coming from different approaches in modes and media, the selected works contribute to a rethinking of the idea of Nature and a search for a new paradigm to understand our relationship with it.
This moment has been called the Anthropocene, a term coined by Italian geologist Antonio Stoppani in 1873 and made popular by Paul Crutzen in the year 2000. It marks the present period as distinct from the previous Holocene, accepting the admission that man is responsible for the state of the planet’s degradation, a dizzying decline which began with the industrial revolution. “Anthropocene” is a generalized term that eludes the intricate network of colonial, ecological, and political implications of the planet’s ecological deterioration. Instead, “Capitalocene”, a term used by some such as Donna Haraway, Andreas Malm and Jason Moore, more accurately points to the era of capitalism.
The objective of the exhibition as a whole is to approach art that moves toward political ecology and a revision of our ecological vision, as well as to understand art from this perspective. Art should be a way to contribute to the public debate on the different constructions of the so-called “ecology”. The challenge we face is how to address the current “ecocide” through art in order to reveal the unsustainability of existing systems, imbalanced relationships and global power models.
The majority of the works come from the MUSAC Collection [Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León (León, Spain)]
Exhibition co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland as part of the Art+Science Meeting project.
