Using Art to Place Colonialisms Effects on Climate Change Into Perspective
The fine art exploring the truth about how climate change began
(Paradigm credit:
Louis Henderson/ Courtesy of the artist
)
A new art exhibition offers a fuller, more rounded view of humanity's impact on the Earth – by tracing its link with colonialism. Precious Adesina talks to the artists.
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Information technology has been more than iii decades since climatic change became front-page news. In 1988, The New York Times ran an article titled "Global Warming Has Begun, Expert Tells Senate". Ever since, discussions on the crisis have predominantly focused on how the state of the globe has been affected by humans since the Industrial Revolution in the West – and with skilful reason. The Earth'due south temperature has increased past 0.07C every decade since the late 19th Century, a rise that has been linked to the mass burning of fossil fuels. Yet a new exhibition of work past diverse artists suggests that we must expect further dorsum in time and analyse the outcome from a not-Western perspective in social club to get a fuller picture of the current emergency.
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The grouping testify Nosotros Are History: Race, Colonialism and Climate Change opened to coincide with i-54 Contemporary African Art Fair at London's Somerset House. Through the lens of 11 artists who have a personal relationship with the Caribbean, South America and Africa, the exhibition looks not but at the roots of global warming, simply also at how it impacts the developing world. By looking back, the link between the earth's environmental issues, colonialism and slavery is highlighted. Also explored is how these problems still accept a disproportionately negative bear on on certain countries. A study released in 2020, published by ii archaeologists, revealed how colonisation forced residents in Caribbean communities to motility away from traditional and resilient ways of edifice homes to more mod but less suitable means. These habitats take proved to exist more hard to maintain, with the materials needed for budget non locally available, and the buildings easily overwhelmed by hurricanes, putting people at greater risk during natural disasters.
From the forest to the concrete (to the wood) by Alberta Whittle explores the legacy of colonialism (Credit: Courtesy of the artist and Copperfield, London)
Among the exhibits is Barbadian-Scottish artist Alberta Whittle'due south film from the forest to the concrete (to the forest), 2019, which directly explores this topic, documenting the effects of Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas. The x-minute-long film is stamped with the date 09.09.19, nine days after the disaster. "Africa produces 4% of the world's greenhouse gases, the whole continent, but still it is and then at the front line," Whittle told culture magazine The Skinny. The artist wants people in the UK to see the disparity betwixt their own comfort and the relative lack of comfort of their not-Western counterparts. She intertwines a number of performances with footage of destruction. "[There was] a terrible hurricane that moved through the Bahamas last calendar week," she said at the time of its premiere. "But what I see in the weather in the news in the UK, is 'Oh isn't this wonderful, we are near to go through a menstruum of sunshine'."
What this exhibition asks is: who we are really talking well-nigh when we question how our collective actions are having an environmental consequence? According to the curator of the exhibition, Ekow Eshun, if nosotros don't let the people in emerging countries to speak for themselves, we force them out of the conversation and into ane that isn't consistent with the facts. "Otherwise we end up repeating the same narrative that we've repeated for a long time that somehow people in the developing world are supporting characters in the drama, rather than communities that are directly affected [by climate change]," Eshun tells BBC Culture.
Louis Henderson's video installation is an adaptation of the poem The Sea is History past Derek Walcott (Credit: Courtesy of the artist)
Similarly, British filmmaker Louis Henderson focuses on how the Due west is primarily responsible for the disruptions to the natural world that humans have acquired in his almost 30-infinitesimal long video The Ocean is History, 2016. Henderson adapts the poem of the same name by Caribbean area poet Derek Walcott. In his verse form, Walcott discusses the furnishings of colonisation on a community's civilization, and claims that the history of these places is hidden in the sea. The footage in Henderson'south piece features mesmerising shots of Lake Enriquillo, a lake in the Dominican Republic that oft floods due to rises in sea temperature.
Through this, the artist explores how the exploitation of the island for its natural resources, the genocide of the indigenous population and the importation of enslaved people have contributed to the global emergency. "I am interested in identifying Columbus's 1492 inflow on the island of Ayiti/Kiskeya (present known every bit Republic of haiti and the Dominican Republic) every bit a potential starting betoken for the climate crisis the world is facing today," Henderson tells BBC Civilisation. "I believe it's important to continually analyse and endeavour to understand the furnishings of the afterlife of transatlantic slavery, both on a local and a global calibration, and how it impacted the Earth's geology and its ecosystems."
Hidden history
Much similar Whittle and Henderson, the collaborative duo Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla explore how outsiders have impacted the Caribbean, but they have a different approach. Their screen-press method for the series Contracts uses layers of black ink to taint the beautiful scenery they depict. "What seem to be conventional pictures of a beautiful destination are disrupted past a layer of a single colour ink, shrouding the idyll partly or completely," say the duo. "Nosotros live and work in Puerto Rico, a Caribbean island that, since the colonial period, has been systematically exploited for its natural resources… As climate modify makes conditions events more astringent, from droughts to hurricanes, the already vulnerable island is put in an even more heightened state of precariousness."
Artists Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla explore climate impact (Credit: Courtesy of the artist/ Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris/ Sebastiano Pellion di Persano)
Contract (AOC 50), 2014, shown at the exhibition, is a piece that is office of the larger series. In it, the pair catalogue sites in Vieques, Puerto Rico, where palm copse were used as markers past the United states of america war machine to highlight where hazard waste product was disposed. The areas are now managed by the United states Department of Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service every bit conservation zones, according to the artists. "This paradoxical designation denies the underlying environmental and wellness risks of the dumps – so toxic that in 2005 they were placed on the U.s.a. Environmental Protection Agency'due south Superfund National Priorities List," they say.
Colombian creative person Carolina Caycedo says that the only way to truly move forward is to heed to the people who are explicitly affected by these changes to the ecosystem. "We urgently need to await at what communities that are actually on the frontlines are proposing on a grassroot level, since they are the people who are directly impacted by the climate crisis," she tells BBC Culture. Her enquiry-based art project, Be Dammed, investigates the environmental and social consequences of dams throughout Latin America. "By [looking at] different case studies in the Americas, I've had a chance to collaborate with some of these communities to highlight alternatives to these large infrastructures," she says.
A Universal History of Infamy by Carolina Caycedo is among the exhibits at the new show We Are History (Credit: David de Rozas/ Museum Associates, LACMA)
While none of these artists offer a hyper-specific call to action, collectively they show how climate modify has afflicted the countries they vest to, or associate themselves with, and the importance of putting global issues into perspective. As Eshun puts it: "I think it'due south important that those voices and those perspectives are heard and not simply equally victims but heard as people who accept agency and autonomy, and in this respect they're heard through the voice of artists."
We Are History: Race, Colonialism and Climate Change is at Somerset House, London, until 6 February 2022.
Black History Month takes place throughout October in the UK.
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Source: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20211020-the-art-exploring-the-truth-about-how-climate-change-began