All have the same breath emerged out of a two-year interdisciplinary, collaborative project in which groups of anthropologists, archaeologists, art historians, artists, geographers, and scientists, have been investigating the politics of the environment and how the changing climate is experienced and negotiated across the world. The exhibition considers our relationship to the earth, and how that relationship is mediated by outside forces. The title signals the vital importance of acknowledging that all things—human, animal, vegetable, and mineral—are dependent on the same ecosystem and, indeed, breath the same air. The artists in All have the same breath give visual expression to the lived realities of those experiencing a changing landscape across the globe. Rather than engaging with the politics and rhetoric of climate change, All have the same breath raises urgent questions about how the global environmental crisis is experienced and articulated.

Tamara Becerra Valdez
Leticia Bernaus
Stella Brown
Bochay Drum
Robert Lundberg
Polen Ly
Cate Richards
Geissler/Sann
Nicole Tu-Maung
Ayub Wali

Research collaborators: Dilcan Acer, Alize Arican, Ian G. Baird, Tarini Bedi, Paul Bick, Ralph Cintron, Casey Corcoran, Charles Corwin, Molly Doane, Caitlyn Knecht Dye, W. Nathan Green, Peri Johnson, Ömür Harmanşah, Tannya Islas, Zhe Yu Lee, Haley LeRand, Javairia Shahid, Shivana Shresth, David H. Wise

Major support for All have the same breath is provided by the Humanities Without Walls consortium, based at the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The Humanities Without Walls consortium is funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Additional support both to this project and the Political Ecologies Working Group is provided by the UIC Institute for the Humanities. Additional support is provided by the School of Art & Art History, the College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts, University of Illinois at Chicago; the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; and a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.