KW|AG guest curator Amanda Cachia chatted with us in mid-September about the exhibition, Ecotopia. The exhibition explores what happens when a city meets nature or vice versa and the resulting architecture that is formed.
“Very simply, this exhibition is about the confluence of nature and human intervention that has both glorious and profoundly dispiriting qualities,” says Cachia, who chose the title for the exhibition to capture these contradictory elements. “The word ‘ecotopia’ can be either utopian or dystopian, where a vision for a world is either ideal or a nightmare.”
Ecotopia was originally developed by ethnographer E.L. Anderson and popularized by the late American writer Ernest Callenbach in his novel of the same name, where ecotopia became a fictional subgenre of science fiction. “The importance of this book is not so much to be found in its literary form as in the lively imagination of an alternative and ecologically sound lifestyle on a greater scale, presented more or less realistically. It was a protest against consumerism and materialism, among other aspects of American life”
Amanda talked about her inspiration for the show and what she hopes visitors will take away from it.
“The genesis for this exhibition was the International Year of the Forest celebrated in 2011. Like the United Nations, for many people, the icon of the tree symbolizes nature and the environment in its totality. It also symbolizes the corrected environment for which we yearn. The environment and our landscape is a construct of the mind, memory and political will as much as the physical configuration of the natural and built environments. Interspersed throughout this exhibition are multiple and diverse readings on trees, amongst other subject matter, by numerous artists in this exhibition, including BGL, David Brooks, Rodney Graham, Isabelle Hayeur, Tristram Lansdowne and Jennifer Steinkamp. Each one gives cause to believe that indeed our trees are growing in new directions and in new places and spaces thanks to this ‘second nature’ that we live in.
The twelve artists in Ecotopia approach the natural and built environment with anxiety, humor, irony, amazement and terror. This ‘second nature’ is suspect, it is manipulative, beautiful and horrific all at once. The boundaries that the artists cross are worthy for it creates discomfort that has real value. I hope it moves and stirs the viewer to understand that what is at stake is not simply what we think of as beauty, but our way of moving forward in our flawed world.”
Ecotopia is on view at the Gallery through January 6, 2013.
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