Beyond 2°

The exhibition Beyond 2° presents a range of global artistic perspectives on the environmental and social effects of natural resource exploitation. The title, while referencing the amount of temperature raise above which the risks of global warming become severe, alludes to the impacts of environmentally destructive industries and activities on the communities within which they operate. 

The artists, each with a strong research-based practice, investigate a range of anthropogenic activities—large-scale infrastructural projects including open-pit mining, rubber tree farming, and hydroelectric dams—that affect local ecologies. Featured artists are: Ursula Biemann and Paulo Tavares, Carolina Caycedo, Olga Kisseleva, Nicholas Mangan, Otobong Nkanga, Robert Zhao Renhui, Andrea Polli, Amie Siegel, and Melanie Smith. 

In multidisciplinary and collaborative projects, the artists bring attention to the social, political, and cultural implications and responses involved in natural resource-based operations. Their works call to question the many forces and systems, however subtle or blatant, that influence our relationship to landscape, and perception of its value.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website