Climate Art: From Exposing to Enthralling

You do not have to be a person of faith to recognize that addressing the climate crisis requires more than technological and policy solutions—although those are, of course, critical. So while we’re busy inventing grid-scale battery storage and rediscovering regenerative agriculture, it’s good that we are also re-examining—all over the world, among all kinds of people—our tacit understandings of our human role on this planet. Are we consumers, with a planet that merely serves as our pantry and sewer? Or are we humble caretakers, even healer-helpers, conscious participants in a vast web of life-kinship? These are ultimately spiritual questions, the realm of philosophy, theology, imagination, and vision. I spend a lot of time hanging out in the theological sub-strata of this work, but I also keep an eye out for those specialized shapers of imagination and vision: artists.

A few years ago, I shared some great examples of climate artists working in music, dance, and performance. Today, I offer some more examples, this time of sculpture and visual media. I’ve been thinking about what art actually does for us at this moment of climate crisis, what purposes art can serve in moving us toward a more just and sustainable world. So far I’ve come up with some verbs: Artists expose, lament, defy, envision, enthrall. Any others you could add?

“The World Adrift”

My first example is an underwater installation called “The World Adrift.” British artist Jason DeCaires Taylor’s sculpted human forms are arranged underwater off the coast of Grenada. Grenada, like all island nations and coastal regions, is under threat from ocean rise, ocean warming and acidification, and stronger hurricanes and storms. In fact, this summer’s Hurricane Beryl hit Grenada hard. To express the danger of a grim future for this region, some of the figures in “The World Adrift” represent schoolchildren standing in fragile, paper boats (they’re actually made of marine steel).

You can go see this work in person—if you’re a scuba diver or snorkler. But you can also marvel at photos and videos. I love the way Taylor’s sculpted figures are designed for “organic transformation”—the sculptures create underwater habitat for corals, crustaceans, and other sea creatures. For me, the work evokes a complex reaction: melancholy for the silent, still human figures, but also awe at the way life finds a way. I suppose this work exposes the threat of ocean rise, laments the destruction this causes, and maybe enthralls with nature’s resilience.

Taylor has some more defiant works in Britian, including one called “Four Horsemen of the Apocalpyse,” in which four mounted figures on creepy horses poke out of the Thames, right across from Britain’s Parliament building. Yikes. 

“Barça or Barsan”

Speaking of ocean rise, the next example is taken from the beautiful film The Letter: A Message for Our Earth, which documents Pope Francis’s convening of a few ordinary community leaders from around the globe in order to draw attention to what the pope’s 2015 encyclical Laudato si’ describes as “the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.” One of the community leaders featured in the film is Arouna Kandé from the Kolda region of Senegal. Senegal, too, is stressed by ocean rise and storms, and many young people have been trying to leave for Europe, often on crowded, flimsy boats. The film depicts Arouna speaking with an unnamed artist who is painting a mural lamenting the dangers these “boat people” suffer. The phrase “Barça or Barsan” means “Barcelona or die.”

Arouna himself engages in artistic practice, too, by welding together a small metal sculpture of a crowded boat. He later presents this as a gift to the pope. Before the end of the film, Arouna learns that a friend of his has indeed died attempting the crossing to Europe.

These works expose and lament a dire situation, easily ignored by those who do not know or care about these people’s plight. Arouna and the other Senegalese artist represent ordinary people using whatever materials and skills they have to say something powerful with art.

“Soliphilia”

The next example is a series of pieces by my colleague Jo-Ann Van Reeuwyk. I wrote about these in my newsletter a few months ago when Jo-Ann’s work was displayed in the Calvin Art Gallery in a combined exhibition with her friend Jen Boes’s work. I think this particular series by Jo-Ann enthralls in its emphasis on networks. Jo-Ann is thinking of both neurons and tree-branching with these images, but they remind me of mycorrhizal networks as well. I love the way the pieces invite us to attend to patterns embedded throughout nature’s fabric.

Another of these images is called “Soliphilia.” Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht coined the term soliphilia to describe the energizing love that we so urgently need right now, a love that drives us to care for and heal our beloved places.  

Trolls and Penguins

These next three examples all come from the wonderful Louise Conner, who curates a series of blog posts on climate art for the newsletter “The Ecological Disciple,” a project of Circlewood in the Puget Sound. You can find the whole set of over 50 examples on their website.

I am especially fond of “recycle artists,” who repurpose waste materials to make their art. I suppose this technique appeals to my innate sense of thrift and abhorrence of waste. But this art also exposes the amount of waste a global extractive economy produces, and celebrates the power of humans to defy that wastefulness and transform it into something beautiful.

Danish artist Thomas Dambo’s “The Way of the Bird King” is a series of gigantic, whimsical trolls fashioned out of used wooden pallets, lumber scraps, and windfall from sites. For these Pacific Northwest trolls, Dambo worked with Coast Salish artists to honor the traditional stewards of the region. But Dambo has dozens of trolls all over the world. Each one has a name, a personality, a story, and a different posture, suited to the site and often inviting people to interact with the figure. Dambo also loves to include birdhouses in the sculptures in order to invite birds to find shelter in them.

The figures are delightful, but they also convey a message. As Dambo observes, “In nature, there is no landfill. Nature is circular, everything has a meaning and everything is recycled.” Louise Conner writes about Dambo’s work that he “wants people to explore, delight in, and strive to protect the places around them. Rather than convince them with arguments, his art aims to lead them into experiences that will change the way they see the earth and its resources. He emphasizes the sense of exploration and discovery that can be found in nature, not on the other side of the world, but right where they live.”

Another recycle artist, Angela Haseltine Pozzi, creates her work from trash washed ashore on the ocean’s coast. The purpose of her art–and of Washed Ashore, the nonprofit she founded—is “to build and exhibit aesthetically powerful art to educate a global audience about plastic pollution in the ocean and waterways and to spark positive changes in consumer habits.”

Volunteers help collect the beach trash, and teams of people build the sculptures, too. They are as elaborate and colorful as Rose Bowl Parade floats!

Ephemeral Beauty

Finally, I’m fond of artists who work with materials from a site to create temporary sculptures. Andy Goldsworthy is one of the most well-known. He works with leaves, stones, sticks, and other materials to create intricate arrangements. They don’t last; they’re not meant to. Nature itself cooperates both in giving the materials and in altering the piece, absorbing it back into natural processes through wind, water, and decay. I think these works enthrall by drawing our attention to the materials themselves: the color, texture, and detail of ordinary natural objects. These artists also enact a kind of creative cooperation with the natural world, reverent, playful, and non-controlling.

Richard Shilling, another site artist, often works in sand and stones on beaches. This ephemeral, site-based art is more about process than product, emphasizing nature’s dynamism and mutability. But we do have photos and videos so that we can marvel at these works.

Of course there are thousands of other artists working to fire our imaginations, draw our attention to the earth itself, and evoke soliphilia for our planet. We need them, and I’ll continue to celebrate their work.

Many thanks to Louise Conner for her work! Header image: Furry Ema. Credit: https://www.ecodisciple.com/blog/rocks-and-lanterns/.