FEMINIST CLIMATE CHANGE - BEYOND THE BINARY EXHIBITION

Each year in conjunction with the Ars Electronica Festival, Ars Electronica and Linz’s University of Art host an exhibition by artists associated with an international institution of higher learning with a curriculum that takes an innovative approach to teaching media art and media culture.

This year, Ars Electronica tapped Professor Victoria Vesna, former chair of the UCLA Department of Design Media Arts (2000-2007) and founder of the UCLA Art|Sci Center to organize the campus exhibition. With Hsinyu Lin ’16 (M.F.A., UCLA Design Media Arts), Vesna co-curated a thematic exhibition featuring work of UCLA Design Media Arts alumni as well as members of the voidLab and the Art|Sci Center collectives.

This year’s exhibition addresses gender and environmental issues in light of the current geopolitical climate’s opposing advocacies, the latter of which are strengthened by fear of the unknown and a reactionary impulse that reverts to the past to seek the illusion of security and comfort. The curators have assembled a body of work that forgoes reductive, binary mindsets for more complex, diverse and fluid world-views.

“Feminist Climate Change” celebrates the work of young artists, teachers, and scientists whose climate-change-related work holds the potential to shape the future at a time when their work is under threat.

Through the works on view, “Feminist Climate Change” explores the relationship between issues in feminism and those in environmentalism, and reflects the dynamic network of UCLA Design Media Arts, which includes faculty-driven research labs and centers that enable students and faculty to work collaboratively across disciplinary and institutional boundaries. In addition to presenting work of alumni who are now active artists and teachers, the exhibition features the work of female climate change scientists, who are underrepresented in their field and who collaborate with artists including: Art|Sci Center alumni Christina Agapakis, a former postdoc in Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology at UCLA (2012-14) who is now working in a Biotech company; Olivia Osborne, a current postdoc in the UC Center of Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology; and Rita Blaik, a recent Ph.D. graduate in Material Science who is now the education coordinator at the California nanoSystems Institute at UCLA (UCLA CNSI).

Supplementing the exhibition of art works and installations, “Feminist Climate Change,” includes a performance, workshop, panel discussion, and a reading room.

Featuring works by:

Pinar Yoldas (Turkey)
Silvia Rigon (Italy)
Scott Hessels (USA)
Mary Maggic (USA)
Byron Rich (Canada)
Jen Agosta (USA)
Sanglim Han (South Korea)
Xin Xin (USA / Taiwan)
Eli Joteva (Bulgaria)
Amanda Stojanov (USA)
Yuehao Jiang (China)
Christina Yglesias (USA)
A. M. Darke (USA)
Tomorrow Girls’ Troop (Japan / South Korea)
Lauren McCarthy (USA)
Knifeandfork (Brian House and Sue Huang, USA)
Phoebe Hui (Hong Kong)
Anne Niemetz (Germany / USA)
Gil Kuno (USA / Japan)
Aaron Koblin (USA)
Ben Tricklebank (USA)
Doug Smarch (Canada)
Christopher O’Leary (USA)
Sharmi Basu (USA)
John Bromley (USA)
Noa Kaplan (USA)
Christina Agapakis (USA)
Ellie Harmon (USA)
Olivia Osborne (United Kingdom)
Rita Blaik (USA)
voidLab

Presented by: