Image: August Complex, 2012, photograph by Laura Plageman
Our Place in the Scheme of Things explores our human mindset about nature, the need to contemplate it amid climate change, and the increasing eco-anxieties we face. The exhibition includes fifteen artists from the Eco.Echo Art Collective: Morgan Barrie, Jeff Beekman, Dennis Dehart, Kes Efstathiou, Tyler Green, Jessica Hays, Josh Hobson, Megan Jacobs, Sarah Knobel, Michelle Leftheris, Jason Lindsey, Laura Plageman, Areca Roe, Melanie Schoeniger, and J. Wren Supak, whose work contemplates understanding and improving our relationship with the natural environment.
The exhibition underscores the essential elements of the environment — water, air, earth — and their degradation caused by storms, fire, and drought often brought about by human pursuits. Photographs and videos on display reflect the relationship between the physical and metaphysical, serving as a spiritual, biophilic statement that highlights the environmental challenges that contemporary societies confront.
Though some of the images may show little evidence of humans, quiet interventions with the landscape are visually narrated by each artist, revealing sensorial relationships and catastrophe poetics that may evoke sorrow, hope, and tenderness. The exhibition is curated by Leonor Jurado, Sarah Knobel, Areca Roe, and Melanie Schoeniger.
As Mary Oliver suggests in her poem “Wild Geese,”
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-
over and over announcing your place in the family of things.
Our collective defines our place in nature—our place in the scheme of things. Each artist does this through personal observation, reflection, choice of materials, and recontextualizing the physical environment we now face. We are taking back agency, thinking of new ways of being, and creating new narratives of a life-sustaining future.
Eco.Echo Art Collective Mission Statement
We are a group of international artists deeply concerned with the well-being of our planet beyond human needs. Our concerns are rooted in the issue of climate change and the impact of anthropogenic activities on the natural world. Driven by an appreciation for the earth’s beauty and diversity, we believe in the inherent worth of all living beings regardless of their instrumental utility in fulfilling human desires. We acknowledge the need to restructure modern human societies by these ideas, where humans are not considered separate from nature but are wholly a part of it. We believe in the transformative potential of photography to engage in challenging conversations and to effect social change. For more information, visit www.ecoechoartcollective.com.
