ZOONOTIC HEX
March 3rd - 26th, 2022
Reception: March 3rd, 6-8pm
Zimo Zhao, Alicia Jo Smith, Susan Rostow, Alfred Rosenbluth, Gina Gwen Palacios, Melissa Oresky, Annalise Neil, Hannah Nahas, Mär Martinez, Hadar Pnina Kleiman, Terra Keck, Erinn Kathryn, Sally Jerome, Laura Horne, Sabine Heinlein, Brooke Frank, Julia Curran, Keturah Cummings, Cassie Chalfant
See the accompanying virtual exhibition here.
Attuned to the climate conditions birthing increased interspecies disease, this specially selected group of artists offer a Zoonotic Hex–– an antidote to speed the collapse of humanity or perhaps a prophetic warning, a deterrent from that fate. The global pandemic has created a social landscape peopled by anxieties and post-truths. A trend toward omnicidal fantasy offers an escape, a futuristic outlet where the Earth-goes-on–– even if we, humans, don’t. Each artist here demands rapid, evidence-based, collective action as an antidote for our suffering Earth.
The artists selected for this Zoonotic Hex all approach the climate crisis from a different perspective. Sally Jerome hits us head on with geologic (or dendrochronologic) time. In a similar observational vein, Melissa Oresky, Annalise Neil, and Cassie Chalfant create images documenting nature, while Brooke Frank flips the colonialist nature diary on its head, exploring the rise of the cult of science. Keturah Cummings’ Sap Sucker lives between documentary diary and ritualistic nature orgy. Conjuring continues with a group of artists who deploy some hex-it-back-to-nature Feminism including Alfred Rosenbluth, Julia Curran, and Terra Keck with Keturah Cummings spanning this genre.
Hannah Nahas and Zimo Zhao both capture the liminal, precarious state of loneliness. Set in a quiet, natural landscape, Nahas draws figures that embark on the fool’s journey, teetering over some invisible magic threshold. Zhao’s work How I Die During COVID-19 delivers us a constructed world populated by the self, devoid of connections to nature or people. Gina Gwen Palacios, Mär Martinez, and Sabine Heinlein look at the not-so-distant gap between human and animal while Hadar Pnina Kleiman, Laura Horne, and Susan Rostow critique consumption, production, and the colonization of nature. Finally, Erinn Kathryn and Alicia Jo Smith use their work to advocate for land restitution and draw attention to the painful, poisoned state of the earth.
Pointing a finger back at us, these artists call out and condemn the anthropocentric Anthropocene. Humans are the root of climate change and increasing zoonotic disease. From various perspectives we see the recent impacts of COVID-19––an interspecies disease–– on the lives and processes of these climate conscious artists. They leave us with questions about the past, present, and future of the Earth, prompting us to take immediate action or condemning us to languish under a zoonotic hex of our own making.
