With the Industrial Revolution, a new geological period called the Anthropocene, the “Age of Man (Human Epoch)”, is being ushered in, and human beings are becoming “a global geological force on their own” [3], leaving irreversible traces on the earth. The scientific report prepared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) underlines that the global temperature increase compared to the pre-industrial period should be limited to 1.5 degrees. Otherwise, the size of the ecosystems to be affected is expected to double. To reach the target, greenhouse gas emissions worldwide must be halved by 2030. In Italy, a state of emergency was declared in five regions last year due to drought. We are facing drought and food crises. The planet's resources are running out. Limits have already been exceeded. The reality of global warming, climate crisis, and environmental and waste problems is at the very center of our lives. The young people who will try to live with the consequences of this crisis in the future are holding today's adults and those responsible to account. Climate activists covering the “Mona Lisa” with cake and gluing themselves to John Constable's "The Hay Wain" are coming to terms with our cultural history. Living amid all these problems, they question the meaning and value of art, what it is good for, and what it is made for. Indeed, at a time like this, what is art for, what is its meaning, what should it say, what should it tell?
One of the important studies based on these inquiries is the "Culture and Art for Ecological Transformation" report prepared by IKSV (Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts) in 2021, which underlines the storytelling through art, art’s power to create new imaginations and its capacity to establish new dialogues.[4] If human beings are mobilized not by data, projects, or excel tables, but by stories,[5] art, as one of the most effective means of expression, can tell new stories, and create new imaginations and dialogues for people to reconsider and repair their relationships with nature. From this point of view, the exhibition tries to tell a story focusing on our relationship with nature and draw a picture/painting of nature.
About 45,000 years ago, human beings began to draw pictures/paintings of nature and tell its story by painting images of wild animals in the depths of cave walls. These first paintings are fully immersed in nature, from the subject matter to the pigments and brushes used, to the surface on which they are painted.[6] As the relationship with nature changes throughout history due to reasons such as religious beliefs, cultural changes, technological and scientific developments, innovations in production, life, and ways of thinking, in parallel with this, the painting of nature the human being draws in every period; the story of the nature he tries to depict and represent also undergoes changes.
At the beginning of the 19th century, when we entered the “Age of Man” and while industrialization was taking place at a great pace, in 1802, one of the most important scientists of the time, naturalist, explorer, and writer Alexander von Humboldt, made a cross-sectional drawing of the Chimborazo volcano, thought to be the highest peak in Ecuador, after climbing it. “Naturgemälde”, which can be translated as “painting of nature or drawing of nature” but which cannot be translated exactly, “shows nature for the first time as a web in which everything is interconnected”, unlike the scientific research approach that tries to understand nature in a hierarchical determination by dividing it into parts. Understanding nature as a living whole and human beings as a part of this whole, Humboldt depicts nature as “unity in variety”, as a “web of life”, and points out that human interventions and actions within this web can have destructive consequences. Humboldt inspired Darwin’s theory of evolution, Haeckel's idea of ecology, and thinkers like Thoreau and Muir. The holistic and relational painting of nature he draws is the beginning of the story that led to the sprouting of the idea of ecology and the understanding of environmental protection. [7]
It presents a conception of nature in which a dualist understanding based on the human-nature opposition, an anthropocentric or hierarchical arrangement that takes human reason and the human gaze as criteria, and a representation of nature as the background of the human story are denied. It is not a painting of nature that is perceived, exploited, and dominated from the androcentric point of view of Western, wealthy, white, intelligent, male humans. This perspective brings to mind “symbiosis” rather than a struggle between species or classes in a struggle for existence. From the human body to the soil and Gaia, there is a symbiosis, a web of life, unity, and relationship. Considering that humans share their bodies with microbes and bacteria in this relationship, the boundary between humans and non-humans becomes blurred. In nature, nothing is lost but transforms into each other, and humans and nature coexist in this transformation and cycle. Human existence depends on the associations, relationships, and coexistence with the environment, other living beings, and humans.
By going back to the early 1800s, to the roots of ecology, to the beginning of the story, the exhibition explores the possibilities of rethinking man’s place in nature, of positioning himself as a part of the relational network of nature, of establishing his existence through this relationship, through the concept and image of “Naturgemälde”, which can mean “painting of nature or drawing of nature”, and tries to think together the ways of man's participation (methexis) in Naturgemälde in a new and ethical way. Instead of analyzing nature through data, numbers, and tables, the exhibition tries to draw a holistic picture of nature and tell a small story in it, as Humboldt did. Inspired by the journey of climbing the Chimborazo volcano and the image of the drawing of this mountain, the story also tries to take a journey towards the roots of ecology, art history, and human beings, to take a step towards the essence and to make us feel the different imaginations of coexistence. With the story it tells within the nature painting/picture it draws, the exhibition aims to create a “good encounter”, to think together about the urgent situation we are in and the solutions, to resist, to become stronger, to embrace life, to open a space that will unleash creative energy and lead to healing.
[1] While there have already been five mass extinctions caused by natural phenomena such as earthquakes, earth movements, global cooling, volcanic eruptions, and meteorite impacts, it is thought that for the first time in history, humans as a species are leading the planet to extinction.
[2] Çetin, B. (2021). The Sixt Mass Extinction Process Has Begun. Sözcü Newspaper. https://www.sozcu.com.tr/2021/gundem/altinci-kitlesel-yok-olus-sureci-basladi-6665552/
[3] Steffen, W., Grinevald, J., Crutzen, P., & McNeill, J. (2011). The Anthropocene: conceptual and historical perspectives. Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society A Mathematical Physical and Engineering Sciences, p. 842-867. doi: 10.1098/rsta.2010.0327
[4] Paker, H. (2021). IKSV, Arts and Culture for Ecological Transformation Cultural Policy Report, p. 54-55
[5] Paker, H. (2021). IKSV, Arts and Culture for Ecological Transformation Cultural Policy Report, From the Interview with De Jong p. 54
[6] Brown, A. (2014). Art & Ecology Now, p:8.
[7] Wulf, A. (2015). The Invention of Nature, p. 127-138. Alfred A. Knopf, New York.