Actions for the Earth: Art, Care & Ecology

Actions for the Earth: Art, Care & Ecology is an exhibition curated by Sharmila Wood and produced by Independent Curators International (ICI). It is a traveling exhibition that considers how artistic practices use kinship, healing, and restorative intervention to foster a deeper consciousness of our interconnectedness with the earth.

This exhibition turns to a group of interdisciplinary artists to engage with the overlapping, worldwide crises of our time. Ongoing climate change, entrenched social inequity, and renewed concerns over public health have all underscored the need for approaches that take on global responsibilities while caring for our local environment. For decades, artists have sought to find new antidotes to oppressive structures of power, and promoted greater understanding of the many ways that nature, health, and sustainability are intertwined.

Actions for the Earth presents the work of eighteen intergenerational artists and collectives who place action, instruction, reciprocity, and exchange at the forefront of their practices. By sharing their participatory artistic interventions and healing strategies alongside research in ecology, science, and ancient beliefs, these artists remind us that we are connected within a constellation of living networks, inseparable from the planet and its environments. These artworks create space for the honoring of ancestors, foreground the significance of Indigenous knowledge, and engage in speculative imaginings through science fiction and network science—organic, digital, and spiritual.

The exhibition features artworks by Ackroyd and Harvey, Lhola Amira, Arahmaiani, Sayan Chanda, Hylozoic/Desires (Himali Singh Soin & David Soin Tappeser), lololol, Ana Mendieta, Zarina Muhammad, Patrina Mununggurr, Pauline Oliveros, Yoko Ono, Tabita Rezaire, Eric-Paul Riege, Cecilia Vicuña, Katie West, Zheng Bo.