The impact of humanity on our planet since the industrial revolution, especially in the second half of the 20th century, is said to match that of the thousands of preceding years of geological change. What has turned into an environmental crisis of global scale, in fact, has its origins in countless yet specific local events and situations in industrialized countries around the world, which provides a framework to Our Ecology.
This exhibition will feature four chapters of diverse expression courtesy of an impressive lineup of 34 artists from home and abroad, and about 100 works to total - from historical works to a number commissioned especially for the exhibition. The first chapter, “All Is Connected,” touches upon the complex intertwining of environment and/or ecosystems with human activity. The next chapter, titled “Return to Earth,” reexamines works by Japanese artists from the 1950s to 1980s, decades in which pollution formed a dark downside to the country’s rapid economic growth. The third chapter, “The Great Acceleration,” introduces works revealing the exploitation of the Earth’s resources by mankind, while at the same time offering a kind of hope. The fourth and final chapter, “The Future Is within Us,” is devoted to today’s diverging discussion around utilizing ancient as well as cutting-edge technologies for drafting possible futures through artistic expressions of activism, indigenous knowledge, feminism, AI and collective intelligence (CI), and also spirituality.
Above all, the title Our Ecology: Toward a Planetary Living asks who we are, and to whom the Earth’s environment belongs. The exhibition urges us to think about environmental problems and other issues not only from an anthropocentric perspective, but also by looking at the Earth’s multiple ecologies from a broader, more comprehensive standpoint. This sustainable exhibition, designed to reduce the use of transport to a minimum and to reuse and recycle as many resources as possible, will make the Mori Art Museum a place to contemplate how contemporary art and artists have to date engaged with environmental issues, and how they can continue to do so in the future.
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Mori Art Museum 20th Anniversary Exhibition
Our Ecology: Toward a Planetary Living
| Organizer | Mori Art Museum |
|---|---|
| 20th Anniversary Sponsors | OBAYASHI CORPORATION SHIMIZU CORPORATION KAJIMA CORPORATION    |
| Corporate Sponsors: | ASO GROUP KINDEN CORPORATION TOYOTA MOTOR CORPORATION MITSUBISHI ELECTRIC BUILDING SOLUTIONS CORPORATION SAIKYU KOGYO CO., LTD. SANKI ENGINEERING CO., LTD. TAKENAKA CORPORATION Unicharm Corporation YUDENSHA CO., LTD. Sakurai Kogyo Co., Ltd.   |
| Support | Chiyoda Ute Co., Ltd. Champagne Pommery |
| Grants from | Agency for Cultural Affairs The Swedish Arts Grants Committee The Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia  Supported by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan in the fiscal 2023
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| Production Support | Fondation d’entreprise Hermès Delta Electronics, Inc. SEKISTONE Co., Ltd. Odawara Meikosha |
| Curated by | Martin Germann (Adjunct Curator, Mori Art Museum) Tsubaki Reiko (Curator, Mori Art Museum) Guest Curator for Chapter 2: Bert Winther-Tamaki (Professor, Art History Department and Visual Studies Ph. D. Program, University of California, Irvine) |
