At the core of the Earthly / Planetary exhi­bition at the Volga-Vyatka Branch of the State Museum of Fine Arts named after A. S. Pushkin (Arsenal) lies the perception of Earth as a unified, multilayered system wherein the humans are just one link in a complex chain of interactions. The project pro­poses two focal points for engaging with today’s environmental challenges. On the one hand, the artists rise to the scale of the planetary, while on the other, they zoom in on the material, corporeal, earthly, and local. 

Some of the artworks explore our interactions with the planet as mediated through technology and visualisation methods — especially those based on remote sensing and orbital satellites. Such remote systems make the Earth visible from a high vantage point, perceptible in its entirety, revealing its living, moving nature. 

Alongside these practices of mediated re­scaling, which makes the planet accessible to our perception, an inverse process occurs. Familiar material objects are transformed into hyperobjects. This class of entities includes phenomena such as waste, water pollution caused by chemicals, electronic waste dumps or petroleum byproduct dumps. These notions –– so colossal, so vast that they overwhelm any human comprehension –– become the subject of creative quests.

Another set of works turn toward the micro­cosm — that which is normally hidden from everyday perception and lies beyond our regular lives. The authors employ art to investigate less­ than ­obvious interconnections among various organisms and construct a visual landscape that defies hierarchy — one in which Homo sapiens is a mere part of an ever-­evolving ecosystem

The art projects on display share a deliberate rejection of anthropocentrism and the dichoto­mies between culture and nature, animate and inanimate, active force and passive matter. Planetarity is a multifac­eted material surface where life forms overlap and interpenetrate, and where the human and non-­human operate in an ever­emergent sym­biosis. The sense of universal interconnection and the dramatic narrowing of the gap between us and nature expressed through art prompt viewers to engage in a more intimate contact with the environment, a more attentive ‘com­munion’ with the Earth.

Maria Arendt, Yirui Fang, Maria Fedorova, Lara Fedotova, Lee Jinju, Maria Kuptsova, Alexander Kyungu Mwilambwe, Zhenya Mironov, Marina Muzyka, Long Pan, Dmitry Plavinsky, Prometheus R&D Institute, Momoko Seto, Vera Shirdina, Agnė­ Marija Silkinaitė, Elena Sokolova, Kim Soon­im, Stain (Alexandra Gavrilova, Sergey Titov), Moffat Takadiwa, Zhang Xiao, Yangkura, Aidyn Zeynalov

Artists:

Юлия Аксёнова

Куратор: