How Artists Are Reframing Climate Doom
ARTnews Art in America
by Kelly Presutti
Zion Taking Her First Sip of Water from the Atmospheric Water Generator with Her Mother Shea Cobb on North Saginaw Street Between Morengo Avenue and East Pulaski Avenue, Flint, Michigan, 2019. From the series Flint Is Family, Part II (2017-2019) by LaToya Ruby Frazier.
Literally sent from the raging fires in Los Angeles, Breath(e): Toward Climate and Social Justice just arrived at the Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University. Organized by the Hammer Museum, it is on view in Houston through May 10. That a show about climate change would flee LA under such duress might seem uncanny if disaster wasn’t becoming so terrifyingly commonplace.
The exhibition, however, veers clear of outright terror; there’s enough of that in the news. Instead, 14 resoundingly smart artists experiment with solutions, some of them literal, as with Xin Liu’s work with a solvent capable of dissolving plastic. Others are speculative, as in Cannupa Hanska Luger’s sculptural installation of looming Indigenous space travelers clad in protective gear made from recycled materials, nomads surviving in a hostile environment.
The show was adapted to Houston’s local climate, with works attending to the particularities of the Gulf Coast landscape and to the city’s role as the so-called energy capital of the world. Liu is using the solvent—developed in a Rice lab—to slowly degrade 3D-printed models of downtown Houston and the Rice campus. Luger’s figures are backed by a threaded horizon line that replicates Houston’s low-lying topography, and accompanied by a video featuring the oaks outside the Moody, connecting the here and now to the future possibilities his work conjures.
[…]
Hope, Rebecca Solnit has written, is the belief that what we do matters. It comes from the realization that not only is another world possible, but that it’s already here. LaToya Ruby Frazier’s contribution shows us this other world, driven by goodness rather than greed. Her Flint is Family photographs (2016–22) depict the community affected by the famed Flint water crisis. The third and final act of the series is on view at the Moody: it documents the contributions of Moses West, the engineer responsible for an atmospheric water generator that provided safe, clean, and free water to Flint by collecting condensation from the air. The photographs show moments of exuberant relief as residents worked together to distribute the water. The pictures stand as proof that in the wake of disaster, there are people who will still prioritize generosity, resourcefulness, and altruism—something to hold on to as the disasters keep coming.
Courtesy of: ARTnews Art in America
