Earth's Voice: An Environmental Art Exhibit shows our planet through artists' eyes
Climate scientists and environmental experts show that when we focus on restoring our Earth, we can solve multiple issues at once. This multi-media environmental art exhibit addresses the manifold environmental crises humans and non-humans face while we envision new futures.
Artists are the ultimate translators of the human condition and can hold deep empathy for the natural systems around us that support our survival. It is through this deep empathy that we endeavor to connect art and science while waking up humanity to the severity of our current situation and inspire people to act.
Earth's Voice: An Environmental Art Exhibit will be on display in Fusion: A STEAM Gallery on Level 3 through August 22.
A Q&A with artists Katie De Bari & Michelle Irizarry
What inspired you to create/curate the pieces in this exhibition?
2021’s Earth Day theme is “Restore the Earth.” We all have worries, dreams, ideas, and objections when it comes to reckoning with the damage we humans have inflicted upon our shared environment. Throughout COVID-19, we have all been forced to step back and reflect more than perhaps we normally would. We curated this exhibition in order to share our very human artifacts of our reflections on the non-human, consider both the resilience and fragility of our planet, call out injustice, and imagine a way forward.
What do you hope guests will take away from this exhibition?
This gallery is meant to highlight a diversity of voices concerned for the degradation of our planet. With our sponsor, CLEO Institute, we also want this gallery to be a testament of faith in science and of hope for a new way forward. This gallery is curated to encourage both reflection and action. We hope this will be just one of many art installations through which communities can explore how the personal and the environment meet and inform each other in the Anthropocene.
How is STEAM (Science, Technology, Art, Engineering, and Math) relevant to this exhibition?
The science of climate change is unequivocal. It is based on analyses of the long-term observational record as well as climate modeling where scenarios of increasing greenhouse gas emissions show widespread global warming and long-term changes in many aspects of our climate. These climate models are run on super-computers and use numerical tools to solve approximate versions of advanced mathematical equations based on the fundamentals laws of physics, fluid motion, and chemistry. They also allow us to assess how technological innovations that reduce emissions could alter our future path.
However, climate action requires both an activist community pushing our government to address the climate emergency and changes in our own lifestyle. Art has historically served a purpose in communicating difficult subjects to a diverse audience and has been behind many prominent activism movements. We hope this art show will present a variety of perspectives on how humans are dealing with the climate crisis, their thoughts and emotions on the subject, and how they perceive the problem and its solutions.
Featured Artists: YES Theatre, Brooklyn. Veronica Garcia-Bernal. Michelle Irizarry. Prague-ject Theater. Bryan Carson. Captain A. Emotions Dance Company. Dark Skies Productions.