WD | Culture | Art
Planet in Peril Earth Is ‘Alive! Awake! (and Possibly Really Angry!)’ in Climate Change-Focused Exhibit •
BY BRENDAN L. SMITH
The Secret Life of Earth: Alive! Awake! (and Possibly Really Angry!) THROUGH SEPT. 6, 2020
AMERICAN VISIONARY ART MUSEUM 800 KEY HIGHWAY, BALTIMORE, MD.
(410) 244-1900
| WWW.AVAM.ORG
C
limate change is usually viewed as a scientific issue or a political debate, at least in the United States where President Trump and his minions deny climate change is real despite the overwhelming evidence. Climate change is just one of the myriad threats to our planet that artists are addressing — or confronting — in their work, and it couldn’t be more timely as Australia burns, icebergs melt and islands sink under rising seas. With the 50th anniversary of Earth Day taking place this April, the American Visionary Art Museum’s latest exhibition brings together a diverse group of artists whose work celebrates nature and sounds a clarion call about our persistent apathy and obstinance in the face of worldwide environmental calamity. “The Secret Life of Earth: Alive! Awake! (and Possibly PHOTO: DAN MEYERS / COURTESY OF THE ARTIST Really Angry!),” which marks the Baltimore museum’s 25th anniversary year, features nearly 90 pieces In “The Secret Life of Earth,” artists celebrate nature while of art by self-taught painters, photographers, fabric warning about the effects of climate change, as seen in pieces artists and sculptors. Alongside the art, the exhibisuch as Bobby Adams’s “What’s Cooking,” pictured on the culture tion aims to give viewers an entertaining but educacover, as well as Chris Roberts-Antieau’s “Birds of Prey,” above, tional “crash course” on the intricacies of earth’s ecoand Johanna Burke’s “Another Green World,” at left. systems and the rapidly changing state of its climate with a plethora of facts, trivia and science, including tion titled “RELEASE” by artist and Rāja yoga prachopeful stories of innovative solutions to balance titioner Santiago Navila. Taut strips of fabric stretch out the warnings of pending environmental doom. in panels across the gallery with a video projected The exhibition has good intentions but an uneven through one of the panels in the center of the room. scattershot execution with half of the small amount The video begins with a news segment about the of gallery space wasted on a site-specific installation great garbage patch of floating plastic in the Pacific that spouts platitudes about positivity. However, the Ocean but then veers into stock footage of dolphins, exhibition opens with a flourish with a formal white wildebeest and random disjointed nature scenes. A silk gown ornately embroidered with two birds, but voiceover murmurs, “How can I free my mind? How these aren’t peaceful doves or brightly hued lovecan I create a positive world? Let go. The past is the birds. One hawk is ready to sink its talons into a past…” and so on. Even though it’s a site-specific infleeing hare while another has killed a smaller bird stallation tailored to this exhibition, it feels like an on a branch with a talon sunk into its bloody broken off-the-rack New Age-ish reduction of mindfulness neck. “Birds of Prey” by Chris Roberts-Antieau stirs to some trite phrases that aren’t really connected to conflicting emotions, revealing both the beauty and nature or anything else. cruelty in the kill-or-be-killed natural world. Back in the first gallery of the exhibition, teen Around the corner, a sextet of vividly green but activist Greta Thunberg talks about the dangers of remarkably lifelike apes and monkeys hang from climate change in a video of an interview on “The trees or sit on their haunches in a vibrant green Daily Show.” Thunberg has a refreshingly direct and PHOTO: DAN MEYERS / COURTESY OF BERGDORF GOODMAN AND THE ARTIST jungle fashioned from dried plants, rhinestones and confrontational approach of calling out world leaders other colorful found objects. Johanna Burke’s “Another Green World” celebrates the maj- (especially Trump and his ilk) for their refusal to tackle climate change. Her demands esty of our closest cousins and their familial bonds to each other. The installation was for action raise a generational divide where youth are rightfully angry about the refusal commissioned by the Bergdorf Goodman luxury department store in New York City, of their elders to take any meaningful actions about climate change, which will burden where Burke works as a fabricator, for a 2016 holiday window display. She said the work future generations long after the baby boomers are dead and gone. was inspired by “1960s psychedelic art, the paintings of Louis Wain, Indian block prints Toward that end, there’s also a disconnect between the exhibition’s environmental foand all manner of decorative patterns.” cus and some of the American Visionary Art Museum’s own practices. I counted three Another installation titled “What’s Cooking” by Baltimore artist Bobby Adams most paper towel dispensers (and no hand dryer) in one men’s bathroom. A museum shouldn’t directly confronts climate change in a humorous and powerful telling. A glowing red bemoan the destruction of the Earth’s habitat in an exhibition and then contribute to it globe is stuffed inside a 1970s vintage yellow oven beneath the words “EARTH IN DAN- in its own bathrooms. GER WHEN RED BLINKING.” A toy penguin, giraffe and monkey are being cooked in While there is strong work on display, the exhibition’s title aptly reveals its lack of focus pots on the range next to a melting Salvador Dalí-esque clock. This exhibition is filled or clear intent. The Earth has always been alive(!) and awake(!), and what secret life is bewith wall text about the numbing statistics of climate change, but Adams’s work brings ing revealed? The Earth is literally on fire and there’s nothing secret about it. WD those abstract numbers to life. Sometimes humor can provide a pathway around apathy toward some desire for action. Brendan L. Smith (www.brendanlsmith.com) is a contributing writer for The WashingUnfortunately, the largest gallery in the exhibition is wasted on a site-specific installa- ton Diplomat and a mixed-media artist and curator (www.brendanlsmithart.com).
24 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | MARCH 2020
