Earthly Visions: Inside the Climate Crisis Access

Introductory Wall Text and Audio Description

Applied to the wall is vinyl text. Above two columns of text is a heading. The heading reads

September 8–December 16, 2023 in smaller letters

Earthly Visions: Inside the Climate Crisis in large bold and italics letters

The column on the left reads:

Ursula Biemann

Jeremy Bolen

Theo Cuthand

Terry Evans

Lorraine Gilbert

Cydney Lewis

Nnenna Okore

Tomás Saraceno

The column on the right reads:

This year’s unusual and extreme weather events have made the climate crisis more immediately palpable. Gathered in this exhibition are local, national, and international artists engaged in understanding and responding to the climate emergency. Artists like so many people are asking questions about what the crisis means in our lives. In an array of media, the artists presented here visualize scientific solutions, reconceptualize caretaking, document inventive activism, and explore material alternatives to carbon-based substances. The exhibition offers an opportunity to contemplate small and large ways to both take action and rethink what that action entails.

Support for Earthly Visions: Inside the Climate Crisis is provided by the Illinois Arts Council Agency and the School of Art & Art History, College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts, University of Illinois Chicago.

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Forest Law, Terry Evans

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Ursula Biemann

Forest Law, 2013

Video, 38:08 min

Courtesy the artist

Verbal Description

A two-channel video is projected on the gallery wall and a smaller, hanging piece of plywood to the larger video’s right. At the beginning of the video, the larger video shows a line of blue text in Spanish and a line of white text in English, while the smaller video shows a video of a lush, tropical forest. In English, this text reads: “Earth is the only living planet known far and wide. Earth’s surface has evolved into ecosystems that keep her metabolism alive. The great tropical rainforests act as major cooling system of the ecosphere. They do this by sustaining the clouds and rain above the forest canopy. A 4℃ rise in temperature would be enough to disable the Amazon ecosystem and turn it into dry scrub. Another major cooling system will then be turned off. Warming and evaporation will further accelerate. And the climate on Earth will be hot and dry. There will be little land left that is suitable for food production. By the time the Forest is gone world civilization will have come to an end. In 2014, deliberations over saving remaining parts of the forest were underway. They took the form of a legal debate over the fundamental question whether the planet was a corporate estate or a sentient living organism. Nature had just been declared a legal subject. And the Forest made its first appearance in court in the case of Sarayaku, Ecuadorian Amazon.”

Extended Label

“Science has never been more important than now, but it’s not enough to explain the data science produces. The images and narratives have to reach a collective imaginary; it has to go deeper than the rational mind. This is what is at stake, basically, the ability to mutate and imagine ourselves anew.”

—Ursula Biemann

Forest Law documents a series of landmark legal cases that highlight the need to protect forest lands amidst large-scale extraction activities by the government and multinational corporations. The project draws from research carried out by the artist and Brazilian architect Paulo Tavares in the Ecuadorian Amazon, a key site of large-scale natural resource extraction. In this film, a series of interviews with the Indigenous people of Sarayuku demonstrate not only their struggle to save the forest land but the vitality of the forest and their relationship to the land.

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Because the Sky Will Be Filled With Sulfur #1 & #2, Jeremy Bolen

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Jeremy Bolen

Because The Sky Will Be Filled With Sulfur #1, 2022

Because The Sky Will Be Filled With Sulfur #2, 2022

Courtesy the artist and Andrew Rafacz Gallery

UV prints on acrylic, fire barrier foam and sulphur cast passenger pigeon, asphalt

Verbal Description

Two panels of eight foot-tall, rectangular acrylic lean against white columns approximately ten feet apart. They are framed in white and semi-transparent with a yellow tint. Each panel is covered with irregular cloud-like patterns in teal and yellow. Sitting on the floor centered behind each one is a small sculpture about one foot tall of an orange pigeon perched on layered sheets of asphalt. The pane on the right has a second pigeon sculpture which is silver and placed on the direct opposite side of the column. Centered between the two columns is a fourth, silver pigeon on asphalt.

Extended Label

“I am wondering what actions will have to be taken for our planet to remain habitable, and what unintended consequences these interventions will cause.”

—Jeremy Bolen

Because the Sky Will Be Filled With Sulfur stems from Bolen’s deep exploration of large-scale technological interventions meant to offer solutions that mitigate the impact of human activity on the climate and ecosystems. The artist presents a speculative image of how the sky might appear if the atmosphere were injected with sulfur particles to create a cooling effect. Because atmospheric sulfur has cooled the planet after volcano eruptions, it has been contemplated as a climate solution.

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Coral Shielding #4 & #5, Jeremy Bolen

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Jeremy Bolen

Coral Shielding #4

Sulphur and Hydrocal cast coral, window tinting, tinted plexiglass, air conditioner vents, volcanic ash

Coral Shielding #5

Sulphur and Hydrocal cast coral, window tinting, tinted plexiglass, air conditioner vents, volcanic ash, aircraft personal service unit

All 2022

Courtesy the artist and Andrew Rafacz Gallery

Verbal Description

A mixed material sculpture stands around four feet tall with the base making up half of its total height. The base is a clear acrylic box. Inside the box is the front of a white AC unit sitting diagonally from one corner to another. The backside of the air conditioner reveals the inner hardware. It sits in a shallow pile of tan volcanic ash amid pieces of bone-colored coral. On top of the box is a worn gray rim from a wheel sitting on its side. Inside the rim, the coral branches around a rectangular sheet of tinted plexiglass. The plexiglass is oriented on a diagonal with one corner fully submerged in the coral. There are three main branches of coral all at varying heights which each end with a small gray replica car vent.

Placed a few feet behind and offset to the right is a similar but smaller sculpture. The base of it is a clear acrylic box about a foot tall. Similarly, the box is filled with a shallow pile of tan volcanic ash and pieces of coral within it. On top sits a black car rim filled to the brim with plaster as if overflowing. A plaster coral formation grows out of the rim into one tall peak with two silver replica car vents emerging from the base on either side. A pane of tinted rectangular plexiglass is balanced within the coral on one corner.

Extended Label

Bolen references other techniques including methods to engineer the return of the extinct passenger pigeons, once the most populous bird on the planet. Scientists are now working to revive it using complex DNA extraction and cross-breeding with other pigeon species. The Coral Shielding sculptures humorously incorporate objects and elements affected by, part of the cause of, and speculative solutions to the climate crisis.

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Extractions, Theo Cuthand

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Theo Cuthand

Extractions, 2019

Video, 15:17 min

Courtesy the artist and Fit of Pique Productions ©

Verbal Description

Theo Cuthand speaks above a series of video clips of resource extraction: freight trains, mining, industrial fires, pipelines, and oil wells. There are several interspersed archival clips of mining uranium. Near the end of the video, an ultrasound shows an egg extraction and a person taking shots.

Extended Label

“With the current global crisis in climate change, being Indigenous, we’ve already survived some pretty heavy shit. Survival is obviously pretty revolutionary. The fact that you are still here on this Earth, that’s an important thing.”

—Theo Cuthand

Extractions highlights the multifaceted and violent nature of extraction—of both natural resources and human life—to further capitalism and white supremacy. Extractions parallels the Canadian government’s destruction of land and the forced placement of Indigenous children in foster care in the interest of profit and wealth for a majority-white country. In this film, Cuthand, who is of Plains Cree and Scots descent and a member of Little Pine First Nation, contemplates parenting children on land that is steadily being destroyed alongside their possible disconnection from heritage.

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Reclamation, Theo Cuthand

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Theo Cuthand

Reclamation, 2018

Video, 13:11 min

Courtesy the artist and Fit of Pique Productions ©

Verbal Description

Documentary footage of three Indigenous people talking directly to the camera is interspersed with footage of their lives in the aftermath of climate wars: gardening, farming, and cleaning up trash.

—Theo Cuthand

Extended Label

As speculative fiction, Reclamation imagines a future in which Indigenous people author their lives and culture independent of narratives forced on them by colonizers. The video explores a future in which the Earth has been deemed uninhabitable, prompting all white people to relocate to Mars. In this new world, Indigenous people redefine freedom as their ability to enjoy life on their own terms, returning to gardening, cultivation, and care techniques heavily practiced by their ancestors.

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Pellicles of Delight 1-4, Nnenna Okore

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Nnenna Okore

Pellicles of Delight 1-4, 2021

Bioplastic, dimensions variable

Courtesy the artist

Verbal Description

Four pieces of organic material of varying sizes hang from the ceiling. The largest is about 8 feet long. They are hung from thin wire so that you can move around and between each one. The bioplastics are thin colorful sheets in odd organic shapes. Each one is a unique blend of natural material in primarily red, orange, purple, and brown. They have an aged leather-like texture. The largest piece is primarily black with a red and yellow scale like patterns. Light filters through them, highlighting the translucent qualities and creating interesting shadows.

Extended Label

“Learning from plants and nature, we need to stop making waste to lament on, but instead make waste that we can delight in.”

—Nnenna Okore

Okore’s Bioplastics series repurposes food waste materials to create installations that produce minimal environmental impact and provide a visual representation of the usefulness of waste. Bioplastics are derived from plant-based food scraps and waste. Relative to other art making materials, they pose little harm to the environment. Deeply engaged in a dialogue regarding waste and materiality in artwork, as well as African animist theories, Okore believes that artists can consider a multitude of materials that produce less by-products so as to reduce their contribution to the climate crisis.

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Matters of Time 1-6, Nnenna Okore

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Nnnena Okore

Matters of Time 1-6, 2022

Bioplastic, dimensions variable

Courtesy the artist

Verbal Description

Six thin multicolored bioplastics are hung in a large window. All have a unique organic shape and distinct texture similar to leather or dried fruit. Natural shades of red, orange, yellow, green, and brown create a biomorphic pattern on each one. Light filters through the translucent material creating colorful and dynamic light.

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Bur Oak Series, Terry Evans

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Terry Evans

Spring Bur Oak, 2019

Bur Oak, Late Summer 2020

Bur Oak, No immunity, September 2020

Bur Oak, August 9, 2023

Bur Oak, Winter 2019

Bur Oak, Summer 2019

Bur Oak, Fall 2019

Bur Oak, December 11, 2018

Bur Oak, Against Anxiety, September 2020

Archival digital prints

Courtesy the artist

Verbal Description

Nine color photographs hang on the wall at varying heights. Each of them depicts the same, large burr oak tree, with a short trunk and long, spreading branches. Two photographs in the middle simply show the tree: one of these is at dusk, while the other is a close-up on the twisting branches. The six photographs on either side are composites of many smaller photographs of the tree and the area around it, giving them a pieced-together effect. The photographs each depict the tree during different seasons and at different times of day.

Extended Label

“Most on my mind right now about climate change is, selfishly, how it will affect my three grandchildren, ages six and eight. How will their lives be different in fifteen or twenty years? Because they are all three kind and intelligent, I trust that they will each be involved in some way with care for life on earth.”

—Terry Evans

These photographs document Jackson Park’s 200-year-old bur oak tree on its Wooded Island. Jackson Park once was home to thousands of trees that eliminated approximately 350 pounds of Chicago air pollution annually and absorbed 200 tons of carbon. The photographs of the bur oak are part of Evan’s series Ancient Prairies initiated in 1978 in appreciation of our region’s prairie landscape and the human hands that preserve it. Evans, who has photographed the midwestern prairie—from the lost to the recovered, from the inhabited to the ancient—for decades, notes that the bur oak conveys resilience, fortitude, and strength and is a “real inspiration in the midst of otherwise grief and anger around climate change.”

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Luc in the Caramanah, Lorraine Gilbert

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Lorraine Gilbert

Luc in the Caramanah, 1989-93

5 ink jet prints

Courtesy the artist

Verbal Description

Five black and white photographs hang next to each other on the wall. Together, they form a panorama of a clear-cut mountain landscape. Gnarled stumps dot the slopes of the mountain, including one particularly large stump in the right-most photograph. Between these stumps lie broken branches and debris. Small plants are growing between the stumps. On the left side of the panorama, a still-forested slope stretches until it is abruptly cut off with clear-cutting. To the right, another intact stretch of forest slopes down into a valley.

Extended Label

“What disturbs me the most is to remember my awakening in reading Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) in the 1970s, and today, to realize my/our utter insignificance in the face of [environmental degradation]. Individualism, greed, power, and ignorance has turned our beautiful and infinitely complex paradise into a vision of hell. At the moment, while the three world superpowers are operating at such a high level of insanity and human cruelty, all there is to do is to help and be charitable towards all the victims. …What is on my mind is, what can I do now? How can I help?”

—Lorraine Gilbert

Shaping the New Forest (1988-1994), the series from which this work comes, documents Gilbert’s journey as a seasonal tree planter in British Columbia, Canada where she planted almost 750,000 trees in the span of 15 years. Drawing on the photographers, Gilbert’s restoration images were shot on a large-format camera while living months at a time in backcountry tree planting camps.

Currently, global deforestation contributes to 12-20% of greenhouse gas emissions because in cutting the trees, much of their stored carbon is released. While Gilbert’s work spotlights the cycles of the “new forest,” it also highlights the tree planters toil to regenerate the degraded landscape.

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Josée and Pam Snags, Lorraine Gilbert

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Lorraine Gilbert

Josée and Pam Snags, 1989-93

Three photographs

Courtesy the artist

Verbal description

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Bagging Up, Lorraine Gilbert

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Lorraine Gilbert

Bagging Up, 1989-93

Five inkjet prints

Courtesy of the artist

Verbal Description

Three black and white photographs hang next to each other on a dark gray wall. Together, they form a panorama of a mountain landscape: in the foreground stand a thin line of dead pine trees with more felled trees on the ground. Behind them, the ground slopes away into a clear-cut, barren landscape. In the left-hand photograph stand two women. Each is wearing caps and loose clothing and carrying a canvas bag full of saplings. Both women lean on shovels and look directly at the camera.

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Shedding My Armor, Cydney M. Lewis

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Cydney M. Lewis

Shedding My Armor, 2022

Hand-cut paper, polyethylene terephthalate (PET), fabric, metal, wood, rhinestones

Courtesy the artist

Verbal Description

A three-dimensional, multimedia sculpture hangs on the wall. The base of the piece is a square piece of fabric painted with faded dark hues of green and blue with frayed edges. The top of this square is edged with fragments of photographs cut out from magazines, including part of a marble horse, elephant tusks, and human legs. Above the square are three raggedly cut pieces of perforated sheet metal–one brass and two gold. These pieces of metal are connected by three dark wooden slats. More collaged photographs continue up onto the metal pieces.

Extended Label

“I prefer to focus optimistically on the climate’s transformation. Many cultures have had to adapt and evolve around challenging climate conditions long before it was part of a global conversation. By encouraging biodiversity to help regenerate land, we as humans may regenerate ourselves in the process by understanding we are one with this universe.”—Cydney Lewis

Leveraging materials found on walks throughout her Bronzeville neighborhood, Lewis reimagines landscapes and abandoned spaces. Part of a larger series titled Terrain Vague, these collages incorporate recycled materials to imagine new possibilities in disinvested urban locales and beyond the destruction of climate change.

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Delicately Held, Cydney M. Lewis

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Cydney M. Lewis

Delicately Held, 2022

Hand-cut paper, plastic, fabric, embroidery thread, write, packaging paper on polyethylene terephthalate (PET)

Courtesy the artist

Verbal Description

A three-dimensional, multimedia sculpture hangs on the wall. Two hands with brown skin and gold rings cut out from a magazine cup a metallic gold, spiked cylinder. A burst of three-dimensional floral shapes made of black, blue, and pink plastic bags and wrapped with thin gold and copper wire sit on top of the cylinder. To the left of the hands sprout two flowers made of pink thread embroidered on blue fabric. The hands and these flowers all grow from a base made of brown packing paper, blue sparkly fabric, and melted black, yellow, pink, and blue plastic bags.

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New Growth on New Soil, Cydney M. Lewis

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Cydney M. Lewis

New Growth on New Soil, 2022

Hand cut paper, sequins, fabric, rhinestones, wood on polyethylene terephthalate (PET)

Courtesy the artist

Verbal Description

Three-dimensional, multimedia sculpture hangs on the wall. The base of the sculpture is a large irregular triangle, made from mottled gray canvas and a silver, sequined top hanging upside down. Above this triangle are a number of collaged photographs from magazines, including human faces and hands, the face of a spider, a cinderblock, and photographs of blue and green sequined fabric. These photographs are interspersed with clear plexiglass pieces covered in thin green stripes and green rhinestones. The collage splits into several long arms, resembling plants.

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We do not all breathe the same air series, Tomás Saraceno

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Tomás Saraceno

We do not all breathe the same air – Massachusetts, 2022

We do not all breathe the same air – Montana, 2022

We do not all breathe the same air – North Carolina, 2022

We do not all breathe the same air – Minnesota 2022

Black carbon, soot, PM2.5, PM10, paper

Courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles

Verbal Description

A large rectangular frame, about seven feet long and three feet tall hangs on the wall. Inside the frame, twenty-four long strips of white paper, each about an inch tall, are arranged horizontally. Each strip is covered with uniform, small dots of varying shades of gray. Most of the dots are light gray, with some almost disappearing into the background, but some are darker, with a few almost appearing black.

Extended Label

“My concern in this moment is about moving into a connected way of thinking and being together. Thinking about how we can rearticulate the level of engagement in the epoch we live in…We inhabit a world where breathing is not implicitly granted, but is becoming an asset. It is crucial to think of new practices among the disciplines that help to re-imagine the air, beyond the privileged breathing of the few…” – Tomás Saraceno

As in others displayed across the gallery, We do not all breathe the same air – Montana visualizes the inequitable distribution of air quality and particle pollution. Saraceno uses standard air quality monitoring technology in which particle matter is captured when a controlled amount of air is pulled through filter tape every hour. The darker shaded circles reflect poor air quality and high amounts of pollution while the lightly shaded ones reflect lower air pollution. The series evidences how exposure to poor air quality disproportionately affects people of color and low-income communities affects people of color and low-income communities.

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