Exhibition curated by Boaz Levin and Kathrin Schönegg. A catalogue with Spector Books is presented on the occasion of the exhibition.
Rice grains snake diagonally across an intense blue ground. Only at second glance does the image reveal its meaning, one as deep as the cyanotype’s indigo. The photographic process references the dawn of photography in the nineteenth century, while the rice grains evoke nature and nourishment. They also allude to the 1943 famine in Bengal (now Bangladesh) caused by the hoarding of grain by British colonial troops, as well as the mass cultivation for export of the lucrative indigo plant, used for dye.
The consequences of systematic and profit-orientated human interventions in existing ecosystems are among the most urgent matters facing us today. Flooded valleys and coastal cities, desolate landscapes and parched fields, melting glaciers and destroyed buildings are just some of the images that reach us daily, showing the effects of the climate crisis. And yet they are oddly intangible, supposedly unconnected to human actions.
The group exhibition Image Ecology presents a global cross-section of twelve contemporary artistic responses in the form of photographs, video works, and installations. The artists employ experimental and traditional production methods, historical processes, as well as new technologies. The exhibition lays out the stages of the metabolic process in four thematically linked parts—Energy, Material, Labor, and Waste, ending by returning to the start with Energy.
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