The exhibition, curated by a team of NYUAD faculty, is now on view until November 24 in European city
Nine current NYUAD students and recent graduates from its Master of Fine Arts (MFA) and Bachelor of Arts (BA) programmes have their works on display in a current group exhibition titled Elemental Relations, which received support from Abu Dhabi Festival.
On view until 24 November at the seventh edition of Personal Structures at the European Cultural Centre–Italy’s Palazzo Mora in Venice, Italy, the artists will also participate on panels at 3pm and 4pm on 27 April as part of the exhibition’s public programming.
Elemental Relations considers another of the underexamined boundaries by looking to the nonhuman, including animals and plants, and the nonliving, including air and soil, with whom humans share the planet.
The work offers a variety of different methods for refocusing from human-centered perspectives, which have dominated arts and sciences for centuries, to a multitude of other perspectives that might help redirect thinking about the place of humans within the planet’s complex and often fragile ecosystems.
Curated by a team of NYUAD faculty Dale Hudson, Tina Sherwell, Terri Geis, Katia Arfara, and Sheetal Majithia, Elemental Relations demonstrates that art is not limited to illustrating knowledge, particularly modern scientific knowledge, but can itself open new ways of understanding the human world as one element of a larger planet.
The exhibit reflects NYUAD’s approach to the arts at both the undergraduate and graduate level.
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Work in the exhibition examines particulate matter that becomes visible to many of us in dazzling sunsets but is caused by human activity, notably the burning of fossil fuels for electricity and global trade.
Other work examines how mangrove trees have adapted to global warming by increasing the amount of salt they remove from the water of the Gulf to survive while also removing carbon dioxide from the air, so that other mammals, including the humans can survive.
The work instructs visitors to see, hear, and feel the world anew by noticing the nonhuman and nonliving at the level of elements.
Elemental Relations invites us to acknowledge consequences of our anthropocentric behaviors—consumerism, extractivism—that reap irreversible damage on the planet. By recognizing interconnections and interdependencies, we can imagine alternative behaviors.
Personal Structures attract artists, collectors, curators, journalists, and the general public to experience contemporary art from around the world during the Art Biennale of Venice. The guiding title for 2024 is Beyond Boundaries.
For more information about the exhibition, visit ADMAF
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