It has perhaps become more important now than ever before to live on this earth with care, attention, and kindness. Because of this, we need to seek structures that do not feed from oppositions and hierarchy in a world where millions of living beings cohabit. Titled after Birhan Keskin’s poetry book Yeryüzü Halleri States of Earth, this exhibition brings together 11 contemporary artists whose works revolve around ecology. Featuring research and process-based works along with others which prioritise formal aesthetics, the exhibition compiles various media including painting, performance, photograph, video, stained glass, sculpture, and installation. The artists’ approach, choice of material, and research subjects are based on the relationships built on an equitable imagination with living beings. By exploring how human beings relate to nature through observations around socio-political relationships and everyday structures, the exhibition requests that we think about the impact of sustainability on social justice and a rights-based approach. States of Earth is shaped around the requirement to protect people’s rights over vital resources, the need for colonial critique and the requisites for reorganising their results.
Ecological art revolving around the damage that environmental disasters have caused humans and non-human living beings, cannot be considered separate from political, cultural, and economic conditions. The works that conceptualise the human and nature theme through various artistic methods and attitudes also reveal themselves in this field, along with those that record this damage and urge us to act to change the course of things. This exhibition believes in a kind of unity that does not allow any discrimination, as explained by ecological thinker, environmental activist, and researcher Vandana Shiva in her book Earth Democracy. “Earth Democracy connects people in circles of care, cooperation and compassion instead of dividing them through competition and conflict, fear and hatred.” (Shiva 2010: 22-24). The exhibition looks at the intersections of ecology and art and defends that the concept of ecology which is made up of heterogeneous realities and is an eclectic term (Guattari 2021), needs to be understood and embraced by a larger audience. Moving from an ecological worldview, “States of Earth” invites the audience to envision a world where nature and humanity are free from exploitation, and where nothing more than necessary is consumed.
States of Earth presents proposals for the water, waves, and plants to coexist through the works that highlight the damage that societies, capital, and power cause and the subjectivity of nature in a world that is shaped by capitalist crumbles. Moving away from the post-capitalist perspective’s human-centric approach, it takes on a mushroom, a flower, and a wave of water from a place of equality.
We are all connected.
We are connected with invisible roots, with mycelia like a mushroom or a tree, with the patches that we hide from each other, with things that we protect, with a smoke cloud, or with what comes from the sea.
Press release from Yapı Kredi Kültür Sanat
Image: Begüm Mütevellioğlu. Discover All The Beauties with Us. 2023. Satined Glass. 153 x 204 cm. Photography by Arto Davulciyan. Image courtesy of Simbart Projects
