The Brick is pleased to announce the inaugural exhibition in its new permanent location, Life on Earth: Art & Ecofeminism, on view from September 15 to December 21, 2024. Part of the Getty’s initiative PST ART: Art & Science Collide—an initiative of over 70 institutions across Southern California—this exhibition is inspired by four decades of ecofeminist thought and action in art. Ecofeminism is a theoretical and activist movement that locates critical connections between gender oppression and the exploitation of natural resources. In the U.S., it developed from the environmental, anti-nuclear, and feminist movements in the late 1970s and 1980s; in addition to their primary concerns around the subordination of nature and women, ecofeminists sought to resist racism, homophobia, and the capitalist patriarchy. As quickly as the movement was developed, artists began adopting an ecofeminist position, producing ambitious, often site-specific work that addressed the systemic subjection of women and the environment. 

Originally conceived of in 2018 and tied to a research fellowship from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Life on Earth uses ecofeminism as a both a lens and departure point, bringing together eighteen international artists and collectives who present new methodologies for thinking-with our natural environment in the twenty-first century. These artists challenge anthropocentric notions around both gender and ecology to call for new positions that embrace communality, intersectionality, mythmaking, joy, and reparative action. Works in the exhibition address themes including social ecologies, the commons, indigenous cosmologies, deep time, witchcraft, hydrofeminism, plant knowledge, science fiction, and speculative futures, among other threads. 

Participating artists include Alliance of the Southern Triangle (A.S.T.), Alicia Barney Caldas, Meech Boakye, Carolina Caycedo, Francesca Gabbiani, Masumi Hayashi, Institute of Queer Ecology, Kite, Leslie Labowitz Starus, Maria Maea, Otobong Nkanga, yétúndé olagbaju, Alicia Piller, Aviva Rahmani, Tabita Rezaire, Yo-E Ryou, Emilija Škarnulytė, and A.L. Steiner. 

Historic art on view will include photographic works by feminist performance artist Leslie Labowitz Starus and the late photographer Masumi Hayashi. While Hayashi’s 1990 works depict contaminated E.P.A. Superfund sites in Ohio, Starus’s 1979 photo and related installation are from her SPROUTIME series and demonstrate the critical interplay between ecology and feminist anti-violence practices. The photographic diptych protolith: heat and pressure (2022) by yétúndé olagbaju wields metamorphic force, heat, and pressure as conceptual motors to depict the human body’s synchronization with the natural world. Similarly, the four-part video work Metamorphosis (2020) by the Institute of Queer Ecology speculates upon life outside of capitalist crises, using larval states and the caterpillar’s chrysalis to propose new ways of relating to ourselves, the Earth, and one another.

Translating her latest artist’s book into an inviting installation, French new media artist Tabita Rezaire puts forward a decolonial conception of both the womb and birth as originary technologies in her work Womb Consciousness. Otobong Nkanga’s 2015 mixed-media sculpture Tsumeb Fragments reconfigures the colonial history of mineral mining in Namibia, assembling archival imagery, a floating mound of copper, and performance documentation to intuit her connection to the land. Water–as vital, life-giving substance and depleting resource–is explored in a new sound installation by Yo-E Ryou produced in Jeju Island, South Korea; in Emilija Škarnulytė’s film Riparia, which responds to the environment of the Rhône River; and in Aviva Rahmani’s 1972 performance Physical Education, in which the artist returned water from CalArts campus to the Pacific Ocean. Additionally, displays from Rahmani’s multipart, habitat restoration project Ghost Nets (1990-2000) will be on view. For the project, the artist rehabilitated 2.5 acres in the Gulf of Maine, demonstrating a multi-disciplinary approach to addressing the fragility of the American wetlands brought about by industrialization.

Also on view will be brand new commissions, installations and mixed-media sculptures by Alicia Barney Caldas, Alicia Piller, Carolina Caycedo, Kite, Maria Maea and Meech Boakye. Recent video work by A.L. Steiner and collective Alliance of the Southern Triangle (A.S.T.) will be featured in Life on Earth, along with a new, large-scale performance by artist Francesca Gabbiani.

This exhibition is curated by The Brick’s Deputy Director and Curator Catherine Taft, with curatorial assistants Hannah Burstein and Kameron McDowell. In organizing this project, The Brick staff are embracing an ecofeminist ethos by incorporating multiple, international voices; by repurposing materials and resources; and by and by taking account for the carbon footprint of the show, in consultation with LHL Consulting. The exhibition will be adapted for travel to the alternative art space West Den Haag in The Hague, Netherlands in 2025. 

RELATED PROGRAMMING

On the occasion of Life on Earth: Art & Ecofeminism, The Brick is partnering with Active Cultures—an L.A.-based organization dedicated to the confluence of food and art—to present ECOTONES, a collaboratively organized series of related events. Four public programs will be led by an artist or artist-collective and will explore local agriculture, cooking traditions, foraging, food and herbalism as ritual, and biodiversity. On September 22, Paige Emery will create an immersive installation at Arlington Gardens in Pasadena, where she will host a plant ceremony and Filipinx kamayan feast; on October 13, Portland-based artist Meech Boakye will present a film screening, discussion, and offering of locally foraged foods; on November 2, Leslie Labowitz Starus will lead a superfoods workshop for kids; and in December, Mexico City and Oaxaca-based colectivo amasijo will be in residence in L.A., and for their program will be hosting a community gathering that considers language, culture, and territory in the city, specifically in The Brick’s East Hollywood neighborhood.  

Additionally, The Brick will present a one-day symposium on ecofeminism on November 16, 2024, in collaboration with West Den Haag in the Netherlands and the alternative art space Loop in Seoul, Korea.

PUBLICATION

Life on Earth will be accompanied by a fully illustrated, scholarly publication, representing one of the first comprehensive, historical and critical overviews of ecofeminist art to date. Informed by extensive research, this landmark volume will be edited by Catherine Taft and Jane McFadden, a specialist in feminist art and Land Art, and will include contributions by writers including Myriam Bahaffou, Heather Davis, Amy Gerstler, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Chus Martinez, Lola Olufemi, Yasmine Ostendorf-Rodriguez, and Himali Singh Soin, among others. It will offer an informed and accessible examination of ecofeminism as it has manifested itself in art and visual culture and is intended for audiences interested in the history of art, climate science, and more specifically, ecological activism, contemporary art, feminism, and critical theory. Readers will discover first-hand accounts and critical assessments of the life and work of pioneering yet under-recognized artists, woven together with poems, archival material, and texts that address under-represented perspectives in a survey of issues in ecofeminist practice. The Life on Earth publication is designed and published by Inventory Press and will be released in late 2025.

ABOUT PST ART: Art & Science Collide

Southern California's landmark arts event, PST ART, returns in September 2024, presenting more than 70 exhibitions from organizations across the region exploring the intersections of art and science, both past and present. PST ART is presented by Getty. For more information about PST ART: Art & Science Collide, please visit pst.art.

Lead support for Life on Earth: Art & Ecofeminism is provided by Getty and PST ART: Art & Science Collide, with additional generous support by the Margaret Morgan and Wesley Phoa Fund, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Knox Foundation, the Hillenburg Family Foundation, Teiger Foundation, the Mike Kelley Foundation, and the Wilhelm Family Foundation. In kind support provided by Christopher Stringer and Syng Speakers. The exhibition is curated by Catherine Taft with Hannah Burstein and Kameron McDowell.