The world keeps ending

1 Aug – 14 Sep '24

Exhibition views

Organizer

META Spatiu Association

Venue

META Spatiu Gallery

Bulevardul Mihai Viteazu nr. 1,

Timisoara, Romania

Featured Artists

Josépha Blanchet, Mimi Ciora, Lorena Cocioni, Ilie Duță, Adrian Ganea, Uliana Gujuman, Cosmin Haiaș, Thea Lazăr, Silvia Moldovan

Curated by

Marina Paladi

About the Exhibition

„By the time the apocalypse began, the world had already ended.

It ended every day for a century or two. It ended and another ending world spun in its place.”
Franny Choi

Worlds end and worlds begin anew. Where do humans find themselves in this scenario? It's easy to imagine the end of the world, but it is complicated to see beyond the unsurvivable catastrophe. What version of the world might survive? The exhibition The world keeps ending brings together contemporary artists concerned about climate change and impending extinction. They are already 'living' the apocalypse through their own works, reflecting on the accelerated transition of human condition in a new era, a posthuman era, without concentrating on an oversaturation of fear or dystopian imagery, but rather on reframing the human existence in a sensitive and poetic way.

The exhibition does not present the apocalypse as the mere end of our world, as a singular event in time that will wipe everything out, but rather as a continuous process of transforming and redefining human interaction with the world. Using speculative philosophy, the artists focus on the notion of ”existing” in apocalyptic times and delve into the intricacies of the post-human condition, imagining the ”unknowable” of the future.

Adopting the conceptual framework of actor-network theory, as articulated by the French philosopher Bruno Latour, the exhibition engenders a space wherein the boundaries between the human and non-human, the natural and the artificial, dissolve into a liminal continuum of interconnection. According to Bruno Latour, people and nature are inextricably linked rather than existing as separate entities. For him, nature plays an active role in the formation of our social and cultural worlds, contrary to what is commonly believed. By offering an anti-anthropocentric and anti-speciesist conceptualization, the artists generate new understandings of reality and the future in The world keeps ending.

The concept of the apocalypse is present in all cultures and all religions, but in our recent history we have already practiced our hope by surviving several endings (wars, natural catastrophes, epidemics and climate change). In the poem “The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On”, from which the exhibition title is inspired, Franny Choi connects personal, historical and global disasters, reiterating the constant presence of endings and beginnings in the human experience. As in the poem, the exhibition explores the fragility and resilience of the world, glimpsing a future beyond current existential threats and reconfiguring the cognitive map of the world.

Reflecting on how environmental concerns are experienced and addressed through art, the exhibition challenges us to reconsider our relationship with the natural world and to recognize the role of non-human actors.

About the Artists

Silvia Moldovan

Silvia Moldovan's multidisciplinary approach allows her to explore complex concepts and reflect on the entangled dynamics between people and their surroundings, depicting the fragility of the world we live in. The artist captures in her works the intimate narratives of the natural world, presenting them through the eye that denies human centrism, thus conditioning new possibilities of coexistence.

Silvia Moldovan is the founder and manager of SEPALE, a cultural and ecological association that also serves as a sanctuary for animals, mainly birds. SEPALE is an anthropic enclave in itself, where the creation of a new ecosystem based on symbiotic relationships is experimented, in which man, non-human beings, the art objects created by Silvia and the architecture of the space are interwoven in a continuous and fluid circuit. French philosopher Bruno Latour has argued the need to overcome the traditional dualism between nature and culture, and to perceive nature as an active actor rather than just an inert background to human life. SEPALE is thus the manifestation of a way of 'living' in which the rights of other species are respected, outlining a possible vision of another anthropos, the solidary one. In this unique space, Silvia Moldovan's artistic and ecological practices converge, blurring the boundaries between art and activism and emphasizing the interdependence between the human and the non-human world.

Josépha Blanchet

Through her series of works entitled “Hikikomori”, Josépha Blanchet addresses a complex contemporary phenomenon, widespread in Japan, of extreme social withdrawal and self-imposed isolation. Although hikikomori implies estrangement from the social – a “withdrawal inward” – the artist reconfigures this alienation into the paradigm of reconnection with nature, re-affirming the inherent connection between humans and the natural world. Josépha Blanchet presents a return to a landscape in which the human presence is barely perceptible, suggesting that the true reconnection can only occur through reintegration into natural cycles. Viewing nature as a cultural construct, shaped and defined by human and non-human interaction, Josépha Blanchet explores the necessity of the return and merging of the self with the natural elements in the context of an interdependent ecological and cultural network.

Ilie Duță

In his artistic practice, Ilie Duță militates for responsible human-nature interaction, awareness of the dangers of consumerism and the imminence of an ecological disaster. In an attempt to save bee honeycombs from extinction, the artist frames them in solid geometric structures, initiating a whole archiving process. These structures function both as artifacts of an apocalyptic future and as tools to raise awareness of the possible extinction of both bees and humans. Timothy Morton argues, through the concept of “dark ecology”, the urgency of confronting the dark reality of the ecological crisis in order to find genuine and viable solutions. In the context of Duță's work, the fragile honeycombs, framed in a fragment of marble and presented as fossils of a possible apocalypse, function as reminders of our interconnectedness with the natural world and the devastating consequences of our own actions or inactions.

Mimi Ciora

In Fade to Grey, Mimi Ciora explores anthropogenic transformations and their devastating effect on the lives of humans and non-human beings. The title of the installation “Fade to Grey” is borrowed from the Visage piece and evokes both a reflection of human influence on nature and the inability in the face of this reality. The central figure of the work is placed behind a semi-transparent curtain, suggesting the distance and separation of the human being from the nature it affects. The curtain symbolizes the veil of ignorance and negligence that prevents us from feeling and acknowledging our true connection to the natural world. The artist thus explores the feeling of constant pain towards the reality we live, creating an atmosphere of reflection and introspection, inviting the viewers to contemplate the role we each play in the degradation of our environment.

Cosmin Haiaș

Cosmin Haiaș is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice is characterized by deconstruction, addition and transformation, combining diverse techniques and complex concepts rooted in artistic and scientific knowledge. This type of thinking that determines his artistic path is, what the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze called, an interference of domains, on the principle of co-existence and transdiciplinarity. Haiaș explores, in his works, the process of humanity's transformation into an alienated society, becoming increasingly aware of the emergence of the second intelligent species on Earth: AI. By creating science fiction artifacts, Cosmin Haiaș challenges us to imagine the “brave new world” – a future in which the boundaries between natural and artificial, human and technological, are becoming increasingly blurred, and technological innovations and scientific discoveries become spiritual and cultural reference points.

Lorena Cocioni

Lorena Cocioni works predominantly with ceramics, creating almost ritualistic objects inspired by the human body and natural elements, evoking simultaneously an archaic past and an uncertain future. The objects with fluid and fragile forms, modeled by the artist, take on their own being and become artifacts of an unknown reality, evading purely aesthetic inertia.Object oriented ontology (OOO) emphasizes objects and their existence independent of human perception, becoming entities that have their own history and life. Plants and the elements of the human body, transposed in ceramics, transcend time and space, rooted in a practice that recognizes and respects the cyclicity of nature, but also its vulnerability to destructive human activities.

Thea Lazăr

Thea Lazăr's multi-dimensional practice addresses human impact on nature, ecological resilience and post-apocalyptic landscapes with a strong emphasis on narrative, facilitating an insightful dialogue between traditional processes and modern technologies. In the “Barren Lands” series of works, Thea Lazăr explores a future devastated by the climate crisis, presenting desert landscapes and abandoned ruins, while in “Nature Always Finds a Way”, the artist reflects on nature's ability to survive and regenerate itself, even in the face of human destruction and abandonment. By investigating the complex and fragile relationship between human existence and the natural environment, Thea Lazăr invites to a deep reflection on the interconnectedness of all life forms and the vulnerability of the global ecosystem.

Adrian Ganea

Adrian Ganea's practice ranges from theater scenography to sculpture, digital simulations and 3D animation. The artist is particularly interested in forms of fiction that can be materialized through the subjectivity of technologies. His works are often described as liminal spaces, where the boundary between intangible and material becomes ambiguous.

In the exhibition The world keeps ending, Adrian Ganea presents ”Young tree vomiting demonstrating lamentation”, inspired by Athanasius Kircher's baroque machines of lobsters vomiting and eagles demonstrating the principles of hydraulics. The work foregrounds the reanimation of trees and imagining a post-mortem existence for them. Trees, normally symbols of life and growth, are presented in the work as entities demonstrating grief and mourning – a visual cry for help and environmental awareness.

Uliana Gujuman

Uliana Gujuman's landscapes unfold among seemingly familiar plants of unusual dimensions, presenting a surrealist version of the world, constructed through magical realism, as in the novel “A Century of Solitude” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The artist initiates a game of reversing proportions and meanings and presents people in almost imperceptible dimensions, criticizing anthropocentrism and outlining the fragility of the human condition in the face of natural forces that ultimately have the ability to survive and persist. Although Uliana Gujuman's works provoke a feeling of familiarity and alienation at the same time, the artist emphasizes the urgency of a re-evaluation of the human position in the complex circuit of nature.