'Caring is a form of resistance' - Otobong Nkanga

Dear Earth: Art and Hope in a Time of Crisis at the Hayward Gallery, curated by the London-based art gallery's chief art curator Rachel Thomas, is a thoughtful and lyrical exhibition. The exhibition centres around spirituality, eco-feminism, empathy and celebration, and comprises artworks by 15 international artists in diverse media—including large-scale art installations, films, paintings and sculptures.

Conscious of current calamitous rhetoric around the climate crisis, and increasing public fatigue around global disasters, Thomas chooses to present a nuanced take. She draws in several thematic concerns, including the spiritual, organic, and ancestral, from which to view ecological art, which are pervading popular culture, particularly in conversations around overall health and wellness. This deeply sensorial art exhibition focuses on relationships with the earth. It includes new commissions by several of the artists in the exhibition, including Hito Steyerl, Cornelia Parker, Daiara Tukano, Richard Mosse, Jenny Kendler, Grounded Ecotherapy, Ackroyd & Harvey and John Gerrard.

This immersive and expansive show spans several rooms at the Hayward Gallery in London. Traversing through, viewers move through a range of emotions, although perhaps not necessarily hope, as they connect with various aspects of the show. Cornelia Parker’s The Future (Sixes and Sevens), a two-channel video, is an example of the exhibition’s ability to straddle the starkness of the climate crisis with a softness. In the case of Parker’s film, a call to action has been juxtaposed with moments of humour, through conversations with school children about our collective futures.

The exhibition emphasises a needed return to nature and a reminder that nature surrounds us. Several artists in the show, like Otobong Nkanga and Agnes Denes, bring natural elements into the gallery space. The inclusion of Nkanga's The Trifurcation, a naturally felled tree, one of the first works encountered in the show, as well as Denes’s The Living Pyramid, made up of other natural elements like wild grasses and wildflowers, changes the object from being plentiful, natural and outdoors, to valuable, scarce and an artwork. Viewers are thereby encouraged to question what they value, how does knowing that natural elements are considered artworks, change how they are viewed. Similarly, artists, Ackroyd & Harvey have grown portraits of London-based activists from grass seed. There is something calming and distinctive about interacting with artworks of grasses and plants within the large, white-painted concrete spaces of the Hayward Gallery.

Some of the works in the exhibition explore moving away from the trauma of climate catastrophies and towards resistance, rebirth and cultural legacies. Aluaiy Kaumakan’s gorgeously bright installation, The Axis of Life & Vines in the Mountain (2018), is a strong example of this. Kaumakan is from the Paiwan Paridrayan tribe of indigenous peoples in Taiwan, who were displaced after Typhoon Mokakat in 2009. The work has been made via a traditional technique which references both the act of weaving threads and materials, but also of passed down legacies and memories. The work emphasises the notion of accessing existing ancient cultural knowledge, an idea that is taking root in other parts of the world.

Moving out of the gallery space, and into the natural realm, is also another dimension of this exhibition. Paul Pulford and Grounded Ecotherapy have created Precious Stones, a hidden rooftop garden. The work was built by the help of volunteers, salvaged materials and the ancient rock mulching technique of the Native American people. Similarly, juxtaposing natural and manmade materials, Cristina Iglesias’s installation Pabellón de Cristal I, is an immersive experience of water flowing over natural rocks under a grid of fabricated and industrial steel, glass and bronze.

Several of the exhibits in Dear Earth are practising what they are preaching. The works have been made from salvaged or sustainable materials, or in collaboration with charitable organisations. Planned over the course of a year, and primarily via video conversations, the exhibition has remained cognizant of its own environmental impact. Jenny Kendler’s installation Birds Watching III, for example has been made in a collaboration with the London Zoo, and it will be on permanent display there after the exhibition. It features the eyes of 100 birds on the verge of extinction.

As one moves physically through Dear Earth, it is impossible not to pause and reconsider one’s own daily habits and the place of nature in one's individual life. Although elements of the show certainly verge on being formulaic, the exhibition is a sincere call to action. It does not provide a solution to the climate crisis—because it cannot. Nor does it particularly highlight the shocking extent of the devastation being caused, which would have added to the urgency of the climate issue. However, it does successfully try to foster a love of the earth, and reminds visitors the importance of care and empathy, and the need for immediate, be it small, change.