The Research and Exhibition
Harbinger is a multi-layered research exhibition in parts physical and digital, with a webpage being created for a further global reach. The research and exhibition pairs art and science. It investigates the climate crisis issues in marginalised communities, especially women who live in urban areas and showcasing the recorded stories of these women who live with such issues. The comprehensive exhibition looks at human hair and skin against the earth’s soil as skin.
The exhibition also showcases the stories of artists and how they and their art have been affected, as a result. These stories are married with recorded interviews with a leading dermatologist consultant explaining the effects of chemical treatments on the hair and skin, and parallel recorded interviews with soil scientists from renowned international universities showing the effects of chemical treatments on the soil, wildlife, plants, and the effect as these chemicals make their way down through the earth to the water table. This is an integral part of the exhibition and a curatorial decision to marry the emotional and scientific elements to powerfully show the impact on marginalised women’s skin and hair and the impact on the earth’s skin.
There will be photographic examples of biodiversity due to hair chemical treatments being invested within the soil. Finally, archival materials showcasing historical evidence of the creation of mass chemical treatments because of profit from white cis man-made industries.
Research
The climate crisis, conflict and gender are heavily interlinked with colonialism, racism, patriarchy, and capitalism. I believe we all agree here. New approaches to development aid need to be considered. Current approaches reinforce vulnerabilities, dependencies, and exhaustion of those targeted. Capitalism, furthermore, its resulting pollution, holds a central role in this crisis. Diversity of experience connects forms of oppression or bias. Through these connections, we can focus on those aspects of oppression that affect human rationality with each
other and the environment and other living species.
Soil health, climate change, food production, biodiversity and water supply are all intrinsically linked, harbouring the potency of an envisaged future on our planet, which can be seen through devastation like coral bleaching affecting the Caribbean islands and The Great Barrier Reef.
Ecofeminists contends that there are significant correlations between women and the climate crisis.
There are systems of oppression and classifications of oppression and bias. All the above have gender impacts, particularly on women of colour who often bear the brunt of climate change through systems of oppression and classification manifested via violence, rape, domestic abuse, racism, and racial bias.
CURATOR: CAT DUNN
ASSITANT CURATOR: DIA CAO