GROUP SHOW
WITH MONIRA AL QADIRI
OUR ECOLOGY

MORI ART MUSEUM, TOKYO, JAPAN
18 OCTOBER – 31 MARCH 2024

The impact of humanity on our planet since the Industrial Revolution is said to match that of the thousands of preceding years of geological change. The environmental crisis is a challenge of utmost urgency, and right now an important theme on the international art scene.
Is there still any possibility of a sustainable future, in which we leave behind the anthropocentrism that has triggered this crisis, and instead, as humans, find a new way of relating to all other, non-human entities? This exhibition interprets the term “ecology” broadly to encompass concepts like harmony, and cycles of different sorts, as we contemplate a new kind of “cycle” that includes human communities, ecological systems incorporating humans, and conditions in realms imperceptible to humans. The title Our Ecology posits the questions: who are we, and to whom does earth’s environment belong?

© Images Mori Art Museum

Our Ecology will be diverse, covering everything from historical works to new works made especially for the exhibition. For example, as a protest against global warming and economic disparity, Agnes Denes’ 1982 conjuring of a wheatfield in the capitalist capital Manhattan offers an opportunity for fresh thought about the world we live in today. The exhibition will also reexamine art produced and presented in Japan from the 1950s to 1970s, when pollution formed a dark downside to the country’s rapid economic growth, in an effort to reconsider today’s environmental problems from a Japanese standpoint. Furthermore, the Mori Art Museum itself will become an environment in its own right, with steps taken to make this an ecological show in terms of production as well as themes, such as reducing transportation to a minimum and reusing and recycling resources.

Contemplating how contemporary art and artists have engaged to date with environmental issues, and how they can do so in the future, Our Ecology will aim to explore the possibilities left for a sustainable future on a global scale.

FEATURED ARTIST

MONIRA AL QADIRI
Monira Al Qadiri (b. 1983) is a Kuwaiti visual artist born in Senegal and educated in Japan. Spanning sculpture, installation, film, and performance, Al Qadiri’s multifaceted practice is based on research into the cultural histories of the Gulf region. Her interpretation of the Gulf’s so-called “petro-culture” is manifested through speculative scenarios that take inspiration from science fiction, autobiography, traditional practices, and pop culture, resulting in uncanny and covertly subversive works that destabilize mythologies of statecraft and modernization as well as traditional notions of gender. Tracing the delicate ecologies threate...
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