Patrick Heide Contemporary Art is delighted to announce the group exhibition Our Ancestors Bloom Overground, curated by Joana P. R. Neves, featuring the works of Lise Duclaux, Maja Escher, Gözde Ilkin, Landra and Barbara Nicholls.
Our Ancestors Bloom Overground considers the complexity of ancient organisms spreading in the soil beneath our feet to partially emerge above ground, and how their politics, social skills and behaviour interconnect with us humans. All five practices question the notion of time as a progressive line advancing toward the future, rather than the circular and spiralling time of fungi, soil, and vegetation. The artists study specifically located ecosystems and shift our consumerist understanding of what we call “nature”. Curator Joana P. R. Neves quotes Timothy Morton: “…our construct of nature is the slowest and perhaps most effective weapon of mass destruction yet devised.” The exhibition offers thoughtful and alternative perspectives on the way we exist in our biosphere. The artists' practices often involve targeted interventions in our over-industrialised land or actions camouflaged as emulating the natural process. Neves considers that art brings us a glimmer of hope: “Art is a particular kind of slow activism: a hypothetical world.”