Throughout the different venues, from the vast interiors of Palazzo Mora and the historical walls of Palazzo Bembo to the gardens of Marinaressa, artists have presented different viewpoints on the relationship between the human and the natural. They emphasise taking better care of our environment and underline that the most urgent planetary challenges of today cannot be addressed without a profound social and cultural mentality shift. The Center for Environmental Arts and Humanities from the University of New Mexico (UNM) together with the Environmental Studies Department from Davidson College put the focus on just that. 

In two different installations, a Library at Palazzo Bembo and a Classroom at the Marinaressa Gardens, these two institutions bring climate change to the forefront of the discussion. The climate emergency is finally receiving public acknowledgement and has sparked grassroots social movements all over the world. However, there is still a tendency to isolate the environmental emergency and neglect its deep connections with other aspects of society. This impelled UNM and Davidson College to make biodiversity — the crisis and mitigation — a key focus of their project. Their installations present themselves as a space to sit, as an opportunity to take the time to reflect on those changes that are urgently needed.

To that effect, the team of the pioneering scientific project called “Divided Generations” (DiGe project) from Ca’ Foscari University of Venice already provides some answers. At Palazzo Mora, their work emphasises the importance of biocultural diversity in the European context. They underline the importance of local ecological knowledge and the need to preserve this knowledge through modern means of education, in order to not lose the experiences of many generations.

This approach of observing and listening as the first step towards action quite resonates with The Migration Blanket by award-winning British artist and activist Salma Zulfiqar. Exhibited at Palazzo Bembo as well, The Migration Blanket is a short animated artfilm created through ARTconnects workshops that features the works and conversations of more than 150 young women in more than 20 nations. The film includes these female voices that are calling for action to save our planet, capturing the climate injustice faced around the world. During its elaboration, the movie not only provided comfort in times of need but also made sure their voices were not left unheard ー they were brought into shape through personal drawings and creative expressions.

The human footprint

For a long time, our attitude towards the climate crisis has been that the effects resulting from it ー floods, storms, shortages, droughts ー are happening somewhere else. As we can see now, that is no longer the case. Climate change is happening everywhere, from our backyards to our neighbouring countries and faraway places.

Artist Ronit Keret offers a beautiful example of how our actions of today are having an impact on our surroundings and can jeopardize the tomorrow. Her work deals with ecological crisis and the melting glaciers, and she focuses on industrial waste such as Styrofoam packaging, which is the material used at her installation TEARS as an analogy for global warming: it is the best insulation material for protecting valuable items, yet it is injurious to the environment.

This insight induced Keret to create the large scale, multi-layered TEARS installation made from thousands and thousands of little Styrofoam elements that the artist collected from trash and industrial areas and cut to resemble blocks of ice. When you visit her room on Palazzo Mora’s second floor, you are encompassed by the whiteness and absorbed by the two video projections that depict beautiful black horses galloping between the ice fields accompanied by a sense and sounds of distress in the air. The giant glaciers ultimately crash into the ocean and the herd plummets into the abyss in an endless loop. The glistening, sparkling whiteness of the Styrofoam creates an atmosphere that Keret hopes will make it difficult for the viewer to ignore, in utter contrast to ignoring the demise of the glaciers.

Also Etty Yaniv repurposes materials from her daily life to create her site-specific Inversion. Throughout this visceral installation, made of hundreds recycled material pieces from Yaniv’s daily life as well as paintings, drawings, and photographs, the artist reflects on the complex intersection between water and human footprints. Yaniv’s act of layering repurposed materials, both found and recycled from her previous installation works also expresses her preoccupation with transformation and ephemerality, hinting at survival in the context of social and ecological transience.

In a nearby room, we can find Dominique Paulin’s paintings. What might first come across as a triptych of monumental dimensions representing a mountain, this installation ends up revealing on canvas the raw manifestation of the act of creation. Paulin uses oil, pastel and ink to paint but, over the last ten years, she has also added the use of make-up and cosmetics. The recycling of these luxury materials has quickly become a sesame for Dominique Paulin, and the necessary ingredient for her paintings which she makes up, like women do, playing with appearance. By making up her paintings, the works are truly magnified through these new materials (varnishes, powders, eye- shadows, eyeliners, foundations, etc…); materials that are saved from destruction due to obsolescence.