In the middle of one of the most devastating pandemics ever experienced, leaders of nearly 200 countries met recently in Glasgow to discuss climate change at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, nicknamed COP26. Long due and with great anticipation and press coverage, it was the third installment of a series of meetings that resulted from the 2015 Paris Agreement and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.
But why now? – plainly, because the planet and all its peoples cannot wait. The world is experiencing intense tornadoes in North America, severe floods and landslides in Europe, and scalding Canadian and Australian heat waves; the Brazilian Amazon and many other places are burning, while the oceans and weather patterns are convulsing. The urgency also resides in the rise in average global temperatures and the pressing need to maintain it reasonably by reducing global carbon dioxide emissions and drastically limiting other greenhouse gases in the near future.
We are in the midst of a worsening environmental crisis and people on various fronts are asking what can be done. In particular, how is art responding to the environmental crisis? Members of art communities everywhere are also joining in to face this crucial problem, in a vast movement that is reshaping the face of art itself.
This special issue of World Art emerges out of this movement, and is concerned about what artists and critics have to say and do in the matter. Many initiatives and actions in the domains of art and visual culture have been to denounce the destruction of the environment; they also highlight and suggest solutions to what, without our intervention, will be a world catastrophe without precedent. If progressive forces are mobilising across political, cultural, and artistic fields, this special issue of World Art is able to spotlight a few such global responses.
Contributions from different quarters of the world compose this special issue. Brazilian photographer Victor Moriyama's photographic essay (this volume) reveals the destruction of various regions of the Amazon forest through striking images, being also able to criticise international corporate interests behind the destruction. This exposé makes clear that the problem behind the deforestation involves us all, from the inhabitants of Brazil to the international consumers of the products of the forest, and that whatever solution we might have for this pressing problem requires a global compromise.
In their conversation about settler colonisation of California and indigenous histories, Christine Howard Sandoval and Jessica L. Horton have a rich exchange of ideas and concerns, involving an indigenous artist and an art historian. Based on memory as much as scholarly inferences, the conversation connects various themes from the past to current visions about the environment, art practice and living together, contrasting the possibilities of a global disaster. Yet the authors reject a unitary perspective, showing ‘skepticism’ over methodologies that might address ‘planetary ecocides that seek to resolve differences and achieve consensus about a singular human path into a sustainable future’ (this volume).
How environment and change can be communicated through art is the focus of the article by Al-Zaman and Shiblee Noman (this volume). In particular, they focus on reflections by artists and environmentalists in Bangladesh on environmental-led communication, raising a series of issues concerned about the perception of its efficacy and content for the country’s peoples. The authors develop a methodology that crosses the disciplines of art, environmental studies and communication in this particular context, and that looks for objectivity through a set of interviews conducted with a range of stakeholders.
Meanwhile, indigenous Brazilian artist Denilson Baniwa analyses his unique trajectory, which began in the indigenous movement of the Amazon region. In the interview (recorded and redacted by us, this volume), it is possible to recognise crucial solutions during his continuous engagements combining activism and artistic practices. He employs various media (such as painting, performance, photography, video, etc.), aiming at changing the consciousness of the public as regards the destruction of the environment and the prejudices against indigenous people in the artworld.
Basically, the political aspects of the relationship between art and ecological activism seem to bind all the contributions in this issue together. Dawson's article (this volume) exemplifies this by way of institutional critique and collective actions versus cultural institutions (namely, the museum), and revealing auspicious interventions of The Natural History Museum and Strike MoMA movements. For Dawson, the struggles concern decolonising institutional histories and their running, which allow for new forms of cultural production, including the radical, in an age of extractivism.
Ultimately, this special issue features topical contributions of how international artists and commentators are engaging with (e.g. commenting on, grappling with, influencing and intervening in) the challenges posed by the systematic degradations and destruction of the environment. Their reflections help contextualise responses in various parts of the world and pave some pathways to approach monumental, global concerns shared across disciplinary and regional domains of World Art. Given the need for critical approaches and public awareness, art and artists can positively contribute to a more sustainable environment. Further critical research, dialogues and commitments from all segments of the international artworld are needed urgently, for greater collaborative and coordinated efforts in and for the future.
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Additional information
Notes on contributors
Renato Rodrigues da Silva
Renato Rodrigues da Silva teaches at Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He received his PhD in Art History from the University of Texas at Austin, USA, and taught at the University of British Columbia and at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Canada. He published the book New Perspectives on Brazilian Constructivism (2021).
Tami Bogéa
Tami Bogéa works at Celso Lisboa University Centre, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She received her PhD in Biological Sciences from the University of Connecticut (USA), had a research appointment at the University of British Columbia (Canada), and collaborated in several international projects, including those funded by the United Nations Development Programme, the Global Environment Fund, and the Natural Sciences Museum (London, UK).