Earthly Visions: Inside the Climate Crisis features a group exhibition of local, national, and international artists engaged in how we understand and respond to the climate crisis. This year’s unusual and extreme weather events have made the climate crisis more immediately palpable. Artists like so many people are asking questions about how we respond and what the crisis means in our lives.  Earthly Visions offers an opportunity to contemplate small and large ways to both take action and rethink what that action entails.

The eight artists in Earthly Visions employ an array of media—photography, prints, sculpture, video, and installation—to visualize scientific solutions, reconceptualize caretaking, document inventive activism, and explore material alternatives to carbon-based substances. Their artistic approaches—from humorous narrative strategies to minimalist indexing, from documentary filmmaking to material investigations—unearth new ways to understand our relationship to living in an emergency, caring for our environment, and grasping the scope of possible solutions.

Among the works in the show are depictions of alternative futures led by Indigenous knowledge, evidence of the unequal impact of environmental degradation, and explorations proposed of scientific solutions. Other pieces consider the material opportunities of waste, document communities that care for the land, and celebrate the beauty of ancient landscapes. Together, the artists in Earthly Visions draw audiences in to closely consider how we think, grasp, and respond to the climate crisis.

Exhibition material can be found in plain text and audio recordings here.

Accessibility

Masks are required to enter.

Gallery 400 is wheelchair accessible with no stairs to enter and an elevator to the gallery.  There are two single-use gender-neutral restrooms on the same floor as the gallery.  Staff are available to assist with the doors of these bathrooms, as they are heavy.  There are accessible, multi-stall, gendered restrooms available on the higher floors of the building.

All gallery text and image/visual descriptions are available as audio via QR codes. Staff is available to support in identifying QR code placement. Screen reader-friendly formats will be available soon.

There is a reflection space located within the gallery. One of the exhibition’s installations is a meditation space with sound. Quiet space is available in the Gallery 400 library, accessible with the assistance of Gallery 400 staff.

Gallery 400 is easily accessible via public transit. The Blue Line CTA stops a 1/2 block from Gallery 400 at the UIC-Halsted station, which has an elevator. The #8 Halsted bus stops three blocks from the Gallery. From the loop, the #126 Jackson bus stops at Van Buren and Peoria, across the intersection from Gallery 400.

Parking is available at UIC’s Harrison Street Parking Structure located four blocks from the Gallery at 1100 W Harrison St. From there, travel to the Gallery east on Harrison past Morgan and UIC’s Academic and Residential Complex (ARC) to the CTA bridge over the freeway. Cross the bridge to get to Gallery 400 a 1/2 block north of the bridge.

Jeremy Bolen, Theo Cuthand, Ursula Biemann, Terry Evans, Lorraine Gilbert, Cydney Lewis, Nnenna Okore, Tomás Saraceno