The 5th edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, In Our Veins Flow Ink and Fire, is curated by Singaporean artist Shubigi Rao and will bring together 80 artists and collectives with over 45 new commissions. Originally scheduled for December 2020 and postponed due to the pandemic, the event will be held across multiple venues in Fort Kochi and Ernakulam, in Kerala, India.
Group exhibition curated by Yang Beichen, including works by Cai Gut-Qiang, Carolina Caycedo & David de Rozas, Sergio Rojas Chaves, Chu Yun, Rometti Costales, Sheryl Cheung, Patricia Domínguez, Fei Yining, Jes Fan, Liu Chuang, Long Pan, Rice Brewing Sisters Club, Pamela Rosenkranz, Tong Yixin, Wu Chi-Yu, Trevor Yeung, Zhang Wenzhi, Zheng Mahler.
The first chapter of the series “Who Owns Nature?”, a research based curatorial project with three chapters at the Macalline Art Center. It seeks to re-examine our historical debt with “nature” and to explore a new non-linear cosmological model. This is an interdisciplinary and interdisciplinary project, in which we will work with different artists, scholars and cultural practitioners to create lively and serious sites on different issues.
Solo show curated by Filipa Oliveira in Casa da Cerca – Contemporary Art Center, in Almada.
“Perhaps for the first time in our history, we are beginning to have a collective awareness both of the reality of climate change that has long been predicted, but also of its immediate and long-term consequences. The result of this is a growing understanding that the world is no longer human-centered, and that to deal with the demands of this crisis a collective inter-species effort is needed. If so far we have treated plants as a backdrops for human history, the works of Uriel Orlow speak to us of plants as indispensable companions in the struggle for planetary survival. Orlow shows us how plants are active agents and not just passive witnesses of history. They are a central link between nature and humans, between various types of knowledge and beliefs, capable of revealing fragilities and inequalities, and carrying ancient lessons.” Filipa Oliveira
Critical Zones. Observatories for Earthly Politics was conceived and exhibited at ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe (2020–2022), based on a concept by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel. For the Goethe-Institut South Asia, a traveling adaption of Critical Zones titled Critical Zones. In Search of a Common Ground is co-produced by the ZKM Karlsruhe and the Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan Mumbai. It shows a selection of artistic positions and is complemented by further works from Indian and Sri Lankan artists. The South Asia tour of the exhibition begins in Mumbai, it will be exhibited in Colombo and Pune in 2022, followed by Kolkata, New Delhi and Bangalore in 2023. The exhibition and its activation program have been adapted for the local audiences in close dialogue between the curators, art mediators and the Goethe-Institut Mumbai.
A group exhibition at MAMAC Nice, curated by Hélène Guenin and Rébecca François and part of the Nice Biennal of Arts 2022. With works by Laurence Aëgerter, Maria Thereza Alves, Isa Barbier, Yto Barrada, Hicham Berrada, Minia Biabiany, Melanie Bonajo, Bianca Bondi, Fatma Bucak, Chiara Camoni, Ali Cherri, Jean Comandon & Pierre de Fonbrune, Marinette Cueco, Odonchimeg Davaadorj, Andy Goldsworthy, Nona Inescu, Kapwani Kiwanga, Tetsumi Kudo, Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien, Ana Mendieta, Marie Menken, Otobong Nkanga, Dennis Oppenheim, Uriel Orlow, Gabriel Orozco, Giuseppe Penone, Pia Rönicke, Michelle Stuart, Anaïs Tondeur, NILS-UDO, Zheng Bo.
Becoming flower? At a time when ecosystems and climate breakthrough is leading us to rethink our relationship with nature and the living world, we can wonder what can we learn from flowers, from their resilience, from their constant adaptation to their environment, from their sobriety? Vulnerable and essential, they are an indispensable driving force of life: they produce the food that humans, animals and insects consume and the oxygen that we breathe. With scientific advances in plant intelligence and a new approach to life, our fascination for them is growing – far beyond mere aesthetic pleasure. Symbols of fragility and rebirth, they are becoming a particularly powerful indicator for lighting up current issues. Through the eyes of artists, “Becoming Flower” attempts to bring a new and a sensitive light on contemporary ecological, anthropological and geopolitical issues. The exhibition brings to light a botany of world history, as well as new forms of attention, sensitivity and thought.
Screening of the film The Crown Against Mafavuke in Mascara Film Club, an intermittent artist-run film club which takes place in a bar in North-East London. It regularly screens artists’ moving image in more convivial contexts, “batting lashes to the rhythm of the unexpected, the seductive, the challenging, the political, the overlooked and the underseen”. Mascara Film Club is organised by Rufus Rock, Daisy Smith and Kasia Lukasik.
Held every five years to showcase the work of British artists who have made a significant contribution to international contemporary art, the ninth British Art Show (BAS9) is curated by Irene Aristizábal and Hammad Nasar and includes work by over 40 artists. In The Levinsky Gallery are exhibited works by Cooking Sections, Sean Edwards, GAIKA, Maeve Brennan, Grace Ndiritu, Katie Schwab and Abigail Reynolds.
Collective exhibition in Danielle Arnaud contemporary art, London, including artists Anna Barriball, Daphne Wright, David Cotterrell, Edward Chell, Gerard Ortín, Gunther Herbst, Harun Morrison, Helen Maurer, Helen Walker, Joseph Banks, Joy Gregory, Laure Prouvost, Lea Maelzer, Leelou Gordon-Fox, Maria Thereza Alves, Mariele Neudecker, Nick Laessing, Nils Norman, Owen Griffiths, Peter Hofer, Pia Ostlund, Rosa Nguyen, Stephen Lee.
In the 1830s, East London doctor and amateur naturalist Dr. Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward invented a sealed glass case, an ecosphere in which plants could survive heavily polluted air. The Wardian case was soon being used for the transport of plants by sea around the world. From garden plants such as jasmine and rhododendrons to cash crops like bananas and tea, this simple invention transformed global economies and environments and shaped our world. Transports of Delight, will explore the impact of this simple but world-changing invention which links themes of colonialism, environment and the collection and display of plants associated with broader historical narratives.
The exhibition will feature around twenty artists from Britain and abroad with an accompanying publication.
Screening of the film Remnants of the Future, by Uriel Orlow, in the second edition of Villa Medici Film Festival, from 14 to 18 September 2022. Created in 2021, the festival is dedicated to artists and film directors who explore contemporary practices of the moving image. Essays, fictions or documentaries: it shows films that invent their own form and offers a glimpse of the most contemporary filmic creation.
Screening of Theatrum Botanicum Trilogy by Uriel Orlow, including the films Imbizo Ka Mafavuke (2017, 28min), Muthi (2016-2017, 17min) and The crown against Mafavuke (2016, 18min), as part of a film programme that expands on the topics of the journey of seeds between the Svalbard Global Seed Vault and Lebanon, patent battles over traditional plant medicine in South Africa and the traces of colonial ambitions of explorers in the Natural History Museum Berlin. In the context of the three-day performative conference UNEXPECTED LESSONS #2, part of the festival Goethe Morph* Iceland at Nordic House in Reykjavik, September 13th – 15th, 2022.
Just like its predecessor event in Berlin and Nairobi, UNEXPECTED LESSONS #2 is dedicated to the theme of decolonization. This time we put a focus on nature, from different perspectives. What makes nature the other? What role does the decoupling of nature and culture play in this? Is the culture/nature dichotomy tenable at all? And how can we decolonize our view of the world and think nature differently?
Artist talk with Ursula Biemann, Uriel Orlow and Alexandra Gelis (conSECUENCIAS collective), on the occasion of documenta fifteen.
We will explore eco-operations and e-cooperations that address both the ecologies and technologies of cooperation (artistic, activist, curatorial, etc.). The project is supported by the University of Kassel and the newly founded documenta Institut, the University of Zurich and Zentrum Künste und Kulturtheorie. ecooperations is jointly organized by Liliana Gómez (University of Kassel) and Fabienne Liptay (University of Zurich).
Group show curated by Kunsthalle Wien’s art education team, Wolfgang Brunner, Michaela Schmidlechner, Michael Simku and Martin Walkner.
Is the city a living organism? Why do oceans change color? Are glass-and-concrete skyscrapers nature, too? The fifth iteration of this interactive exhibition fzooms in on questions that revolve around the ways in which our environment is changing. We take inspiration from artists who explore climate change and natural ecosystems as well as the city as a habitat for animals, plants, and humans.
Uriel Orlow presents a newly commissioned installation at the 12th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art. Titled Still Present! and curated by Kader Attia, the Biennale gathers artists from around the globe engage with the legacies of modernity and the resulting state of planetary emergency. In addition to their works, the exhibition features historical documents, including political and activist publications from the Archiv der Avantgarden – Egidio Marzona (AdA). The contributions reveal connections between colonialism, fascism, and imperialism, and propose decolonial strategies for the future, oriented around a set of questions: How can a decolonial ecology be shaped? What role can non-Western feminist movements play in the reappropriation of historical narratives? How can the debate on restitution be reinvented beyond the return of plundered goods? Can the field of emotion be reclaimed through art?
Uriel Orlow presents two new works for the June edition “Rebuilding Connections” by Edition VFO (Zurich), together with works by artists Mirko Baselgia, Olaf Breuning, Natacha Donzé, Delphine Reist, Sergio Rojas Chaves, Anouk Tschanz:
— Forest Essentials Take Two / Close-Up (Bóbe), 2022 (wood cut on Japanese paper, 46 x 62 cm, edition 12 + 4AP, produced by Hugo Amorim)
— Forest Essentials Take Two / Long Shot (Bóbe), 2022 (silkscreen print on wood, 46 x 62 cm, edition 12 + 4AP, produced by Telmo Chaparra)
Artist Talk with Uriel Orlow: Friday, 15 July 6:30 pm
Group show with works by Ravi Agarwal, Ambra Castagnetti, Wilson Diaz, Monica Ursina Jäger, Karrabing Film Collective, Hunter Longe, Maurice Maggi, Naufus Ramirez-Figueroa, NGGAMDU.ORG in collaboration with Tomás Saraceno. Organized by AIA (Awareness in Art) in Löwenbräukunst, Zurich, and curated by Martina Huber-Marthaler and Gianni Jetzer.
In the Anthropocene, processes of exploitation shape humanity’s relationship with nature. In the face of ecological crises, voices have emerged that question its legitimation. The exhibition Back to the Roots presents artistic positions that offer alternative views of ecological thinking, expanding the consciousness of earthly coexistence, thus overcoming the colonial past.
In his seminal book Decolonizing Nature, the American art historian T. J. Demos calls for new ecological art that takes local, sociopolitical, and economic aspects into account. Ecological knowledge passed on from one generation to the next has become a new point of reference in today’s debate. It points to local peoples’ know-how over long periods through direct contact with the environment. This knowledge is site-specific and often includes relationships between plants, animals, natural phenomena, landscapes, and the rhythms of everyday life.
Group exhibition curated by Flóra Gadó and Dalma Eszter Kollár, with works by artists David Eisl, Marta Fišerová Cwiklinski, Kitti Gosztola – Bence György Pálinkás, Nona Inescu, Mónika Kárándi, Stella Koleszár, Dániel Máté, Barbara Mihályi, Uriel Orlow and Sergio Rojas Chaves.
The exhibition’s point of departure is the extent to which our attitude to care has changed in recent years as a result of the pandemic. Exploring the small, even invisible manifestations of caring and how it can extend to the non-human world around us, the exhibition focuses on plants. A number of artistic strategies are represented in which, through attention to and collaboration with the flora of our immediate environment, a more liveable future for more than just humans gains significance. The former symbolism of plants, flowers and fruits is replaced by current interpretations seeking a way out of contemporary crises.
Group exhibition curated by Adwait Singh with works by Abdessamad El Montassir, Almagul Menlibayeva, Asunción Molinos Gordo, Bhagwati Prasad, Bouba Touré with Raphaël Grisey, Deniz Uster with Burcu Yağcıoğlu, Bint Mbareh, E.B. Itso, Fatoş Irwen, Gülsün Karamustafa, İpek Hamzaoğlu, Jonas Staal, Kamen Stoyanov, Karan Shrestha, Kathyayini Dash, Lara Ögel, Marwa Arsanios, Merve Ünsal, Mikhail Karikis, Nandita Kumar, Neda Saeedi, Nejbir Erkol, Ömer Pekin, Rakhi Peswani, Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam, Sasha Huber, Selma Gürbüz , Server Demirtaş, Sibel Horada, Thukral and Tagra, Uriel Orlow, Zahra Malkani.
With a focus on the Levant — the cradle of civilisation — and its allied geographies along the ancient silk route, the exhibition will see a gathering of over 30 artists from Turkey and beyond, representing around 25 countries. Their works bring the edaphic generosity of the region as well as its syncretic bindings to bear upon its fraught present. Spread across four main venues in the old town, with a few spill-overs, the exhibition will open to the public free of charge from 20 May onwards. Through the course of the exhibition border_less, an independent archiving and publishing platform, will be keeping a cosy reading space at Sahaf Kebikeç for those who seek an extended engagement with the exhibition contents.
Group exhibition curated by El Hadj Malick Ndiaye and Emmanuelle Cherel with projects by Hervé Youmbi, Ibrahima Thiam, Uriel Orlow / Ariane Leblanc, Alioune Diouf, Patrick Bernier / Olive Martin, Ussumane Ca, Vincent Meessen, François Knoetze and Mamadou Khouma Gueye.
Teg Bët Gëstu Gi aims to stir up the metamorphic life of objects. Teg Bët Gëstu Gi in Wolof means ‘to see or touch with the eyes’ – research. Uriel Orlow’s new commission ‘Botanique de la more, botanique de la vie’ consists of a video and a garden and engages with artefacts from the collection of the Musée Theodore Monod which are intimately connected with plants: woven baskets used to collect plants, mortar and pestle used to process leaves and roots for medicinal use or sachets of plants worn by warriors to bring them luck… Objects that testify to our entanglement with the vegetal world and that evoke the spiritual and medicinal powers of plants.
Uriel Orlow exhibits for the first time the commissioned work Botany of Death, Botany of Life (video, 2020-2022). Outside the museum walls, in the garden, we encounter Botany of Care, a medicinal garden project conceived and developed jointly by Uriel Orlow and Ariane Leblanc.
Group show in Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau, Switzerland. The Collection — the cornerstone of the Aargauer Kunsthaus — is growing apace, and today consists of over 20,000 pieces of Swiss art dating from the 18th century to the present day. In recent years, notable donations and loans have contributed enormously to the outstanding importance of the collection in the European art scene. These additions, including many works by contemporary artists, serve as a source of fresh inspiration and form surprising associations within the portfolios. Spread throughout the gallery space, the exhibition describes new narrative arcs in three chapters, reflecting the past, questioning the present, and venturing a glimpse of the future.
Group exhibition curated by Sara Castelo Branco, with works by Basma Al-Sharif, Diogo Evangelista, Hugo de Almeida Pinho, Ismail Bahri, João Tabarra, Julien Prévieux, Nguyễn Trinh Thi, Oscar Santillan, Sanaz Sohrabi.
“The hand was, in more than one aspect, our destiny”, said Elias Canetti. This apparent predisposition is manifested by the fact that the hand is one of the most symbolized parts of the human body – it’s an archetypal organ to talk about the process of correspondence between theory and practice, thought and materialization. On the other hand, gestures express both ancestral elements, and symptoms or traces of a given time, revealing what we can apprehend from our own contemporary condition. Considering this context, the group exhibition Back of My Hand is based on the way in which different artists work the poetic and political potential of hand, and its relationship with certain dynamics involved in the (in)visibility of images. In this sense, this exhibition presents a series of works in which the hand appears as a mechanism of action, revelation or performativity, aiming to question certain structures of knowledge and historical narrative, and to reflect about a tensioned space between what the image makes visible, and what exists in it in resistance and unintelligibility.
Uriel Orlow has created three maps to celebrate the centenary of the Becontree Estate. Through the rich variety of plant life found on the estate, the maps tell stories of global migrations, cultural history and botanical remedies. Looking at Becontree through the prism of plants, we can trace rich histories of global connections and migrations, discover food sources and healing remedies for the body, and encounter stories of traditional use or cultural significance. The maps are available free of charge at the Valence House Museum & Valence Library (Becontree Avenue), the White House (884 Green Lane) and throughout Becontree Estate.
Commissioned by CREATE for the Becontree centenary, based on a botanical survey of Becontree Estate conducted by Denis J Vickers, a consultant ecologist living on the estate.
Perfect Nature: Amstelpark Test Site is a group exhibition and field experiment organized in collaboration with Neal White of CREAM/Westminster University in London. This project explores how local and indigenous knowledge relates to scientific methodology. What is the impact that scientific and visual classification systems of the natural world have on our relationship to flora and fauna? The artworks presented by Neal White, Tina O’Donnell and Uriel Orlow explore scientific representations of nature – which we encounter for example in the field of international trade in plants, plant medicines and soil – alongside local cultural knowledge in which other relationships to the natural world appear.
Screening of Imbizo Ka Mafavuke at X-Centric Futures as part of the monthly cycle We’d like to add, organised by Giovanbattista Tusa and Bartholomew Ryan, in collaboration with the CultureLab of the Institute of Philosophy of Nova and Carpintarias de São Lázaro Cultural Centre.
Visual Natures. The Politics and Culture of Environmentalism in the 20th and 21st Centuries is the result of more than two years of critical investigations around climate science, creative practices and eco-politics. This research project surveys political, social and cultural forms of collective agency that, over the course of the last one hundred years or so, demonstrate how the transforming human understanding of “nature” – philosophical, biological, economic – informs the ways in which we organise, sustain and govern our communities as an expanding planetary construct, both in concept and practice.
Building on the success of 2021 symposium in which transdisciplinary dialogue was generated around the newly enlivened subject of vegetal life, Phytogenesis II seeks to expand the field of enquiry by exploring more overtly political and activist nuances and provocations in the plant-philosophy-photography assemblage.
Climate change, and its devastating global effects, provides an impetus for this shift in focus, away from the instrumental and towards the ethical, allowing for ‘plant-human becomings and coevolutions to emerge’ (Aloi, 2018).
Organized by Dr Carole Baker & Marjolaine Ryley, with : Dr Prue Gibson and Dr Fabri Blacklock, Dr Giovanni Aloi, Dr Uriel Orlow, Nettie Edwards, William Arnold, Jamie House, Malcolm Dickson, Hannah Fletcher.
A transdisciplinary conversation on the relationship between humans and alpine nature in times of climate change, with Uriel Orlow, artist, Dr. Sonja Wipf, Head of Research and Monitoring, Swiss National Park, Zernez, Prof. Dr. Boris Previšić, Director Institute Cultures of the Alps, University of Lucerne, Dr. Andreas Weber, biologist and philosopher, Berlin, Sabine Rusterholz Petko, curator of the exhibition and Christof Rösch, Co-Director Fundaziun Nairs.
Set to be the largest presentation of contemporary art in Nepal to date, KT 2077 is curated by artistic director Cosmin Costinas and co-curators Sheelasha Rajbhandari and Hit Man Gurung. The Triennale is informed by discourses of decolonisation, migration and displacement, indigenous knowledge, and redefining the parameters of art beyond a Eurocentric canon. It will discuss appropriate frameworks of understanding and bring together the multiple aesthetic and cosmological lineages active today.
The 2022 edition is curated by Nepalese artists and cultural organisers Hit Man Gurung and Sheelasha Rajbhandari, working with director Sharareh Bajracharya and artistic director Cosmin Costinas, and will include work by more than one hundred artists representing about forty countries.
Collection of contributions by artists, curators, designers, gardeners, farmers and organisations from various parts of the world, containing actual seeds, conceptual seeds, artworks, spells, instructions, videos and sound recordings. Curated by Borbála Soós, with works by Elena Agudio / Savvy Contemporary, James Bridle, Joélson Buggilla & Jorgge Menna Barreto, Sunoj D & Namrata Neog / Lakshmi Nivas, Sári Ember, Saskia Fischer, Oto Hudec, Areej Huinti, Zayaan Khan, Jumana Manna, Emma Nicolson / Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Elia Nurvista, Uriel Orlow, Martin Piaček, Tabita Rezaire, Sara Rodrigues & Rodrigo B. Camacho / Landra, Vivien Sansour / Palestine Heirloom Seed Library, Ai Wei Wei, Ayman Zedani, Amy Watson / Pool.
British Art Show 9 explores three overarching themes – healing, care and reparative history; tactics for togetherness; and imagining new futures, through four exhibitions.
Many of the artists in BAS9 investigate identity from an intersectional perspective, taking account of multiple identities that coexist such as class, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. In Wolverhampton the exhibition explores these ideas in a critical dialogue with Wolverhampton’s cultural history which has been shaped by the diverse populations that came to work in its manufacturing industries during the post-war period.
BAS9 is curated by Irene Aristizábal and Hammad Nasar and includes work by over 40 artists.
This group show reflects upon the concept of ruins and remnants as elements that evidence political, ecological, social and human concerns with regard to history. Ruins tell a story, but they also provide us with doubts concerning both the past and the future. Through the works of Lara Almarcegui, Rossella Biscotti, Teresa Margolles, Théo Mercier and Uriel Orlow, the exhibition presents to the visitors the concept of contemporary ruin as a vessel of different emotions and narratives.
