"Human/Nature: Artists Respond to a Changing Planet" Review

They were given two questions: "Can art inspire conservation? Can conservation inspire art?" From these queries the eight international artists of the Human/Nature: Artists Respond to a Changing Planet project (featured at the Berkeley Art Museum), manifested their own creations. Each artist was commissioned to respond to one of the UNESCO World Heritage Natural Sites. These sites, chosen because of their exceptional cultural and ecological value, contain environments and cultures within them that tenuously cling to existence. The artists', (Dario Robleto, Ann Hamilton, Rigo 23, Diana Thater, Marcos Ramírez ERRE, Mark Dion, Xu Bing, and Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle) experienced these locations extensively and from varied perspectives, thus allowing an intriguing diversity in the works exhibited.

I was skeptical and anticipated that wave of sentimentality that often pervades the atmosphere of exhibitions dealing with nature and conservation, especially during the global warming crisis. Yet I found that the artists in the show dealt little with trying to proselytize a message for conservation. Instead, they focused more heavily on the relationships between people and their surrounding natural environments. The extent to which these artists engaged in the cultural and ecological milieu during the residences fostered refreshing interpretations of the notions of preservation. I, however, was drawn to one artist in particular, Dario Robleto, because of his unique use of materials such as shredded 8 mm film, mammoth tusks, and nineteenth century braided hair.

Robleto's, A Homeopathic Treatment for Human Longing engaged a very different
arena of perception and material. Time spent in Waterton Glacier International Peace Park was focused on the study of melting glaciers caused by global warming. His choice to focus on not only a process of nature, but also a force that overwhelms that of humans was extremely novel and compelling. Robleto's combination of antique artifacts and animal remnants reflected a timorous human awareness of the passage of time.

As I approached Robleto's works they began to radiate a distinct ethos of sentimentality. It was an air that attaches itself to the Victorian relics of mourning, but laced with an inevitability, a certainty, of death and natural processes. His work, often a series of assembled allegorical menageries, was preserved and memorialized through their encasement in glass. The largest occupants of this glass sat side by side on one wall of the gallery. Two glass-doored armoires dominated the space. In one aspect, they functioned as dichotomies of each other, one almost entirely white and the other black. On the shelves of the white armoire were commemorative plaques dedicated to "Lazarus species" which were previously and erroneously deemed extinct. These works, though loaded with concept, felt like a chore to experience. Best appreciated through careful examination, the small frames were so numerous that it became difficult to carry oneself through the work. While these pieces would have functioned well on their own, when included with the rest of Robleto's works they did not garner the attention deserved.

On the floor, inside what appears to be a Victorian doctor's chest, Robleto carefully arranged a new plethora of objects: glass vials, electrode wands, bloodletting cupping glasses, various homeopathic remedies, shredded audiotape of "the last heartbeats of a loved one." The flowery sentimentality of some of these objects was nearly overwhelming. Their meaning changed only when presented beside the earthy residues of natural process. For instance, a particularly decorative and decidedly motherly piece, bathed in pink satin, owed its distinction to the inclusion of two large mammoth tusks. They encircled small picture frames that decorated the center of the piece. A closer inspection of the frames revealed that they contained an intricate beading and weaving of hair. This Victorian relic of the preservation of memory shifted into focus the relation between the process of mourning not only of loved ones, but the often turbulent world around us. Robleto juxtaposed the Victorian tendency to memorialize lost loved ones with evidence of the continuity and tenacity of the earth.

What is important about Robleto's work is it makes us reflective without overt condemnation of ecologically damaging human activities. The importance of art is not in how directly it can speak about current issues, but in the ways it can influence changes in perspective of the world around us. By juxtaposing nostalgic feelings of loss against the continual processes of glacial death and rebirth Robleto forces us to examine our positions as contributers to a global crisis.


2009