“New Earthworks,” an exhibition and examination of humans interconectedness with Earth, hits ASU Art Museum early next month. The exhibit featuring the work of, eight contemporary artists, David Brooks, Carolina Caycedo, Desert ArtLab (April Bojorquez and Matt Garcia), Hope Ginsburg, Scott Hocking, Mary Mattingly, Sam Van Aken and Steven Yazzie. Their pieces address prevalent environmental issues including biodiversity, environmental equity, and climate change. The exhibition, co-curated by artist Mark Dion and ASU Art Museum Curator Emeritus Heather Sealy Lineberry, is on view from April 9 through Sept. 25, 2022 at the ASU Art Museum at Nelson Fine Arts Center.
Mediums including installations, sculpture, photographs, films, drawings, texts and objects, tell the story of humans and Earth. Each artist uses their work to reframe the relationship between viewers and the Earth. “We are confronted with daily evidence of the earth’s increasing distress,” says Heather Sealy Lineberry, exhibition co-curator. “The artists in ‘New Earthworks’ employ a range of strategies and approaches to help us better understand our interconnectivity with the earth and the need for action now.”
Artist and pomologist Sam Van Aken offers a site-specific piece to the exhibit. He used the ASU Arboretum to plant a peach tree and mapped the history of stone fruit in the region. With this exhibit, Aken highlights the increasing loss of species and reliance on the peach tree species. Aken uses the tree as a living sculpture. Additionally, an installation by Steven Yazzie is included in the exhibit. A combination of current land acknowledgments with a hydroponic tower growing traditional native plants explores ideas and perceptions of the land from the past, present and future. Local artists April Bojorquez and Matthew Garcia of Desert ArtLab join the exhibitions as performers. Their Mobile ECO-STUDIO is a portable lab showing how to grow, harvest and eat traditional plants of the desert. It was started in Phoenix in 2013 and continues to evolve.
“Earthworks” began as an art movement in the 1960s and 70s, but featured artists aren’t tethered to the old definition. “A maverick group of younger artists are expanding Earthworks into increasingly urgent territory,” explains Mark Dion, co-curator of the exhibition. They are “adopting Earthworks strategies but with a contemporary vocabulary unavailable to previous practitioners. Current notions of ecological crisis, environmental racism, the culture of intentionality, queer theory, and diversity are very much at the heart of this new group of earth artists.”
Join us at the museum for the opening reception on Saturday, April 9, from 3 to 5 p.m., featuring an artist panel moderated by co-curator Heather Sealy Lineberry. More details will be announced on our website at asuartmuseum.asu.edu.
“New Earthworks” is supported by the Diane and Bruce Halle Foundation and is sponsored by the Patti Parsons Foundation, Helme Prinzen Endowment and Joan D. Cremin. Additional support for artist installations provided by Lettuce Grow, an initiative of The Farm Project, and the UrbanFarm Fruit Tree Program.
