Histories of Ecology Exposition collective

This international collective exhibition will occupy all of the exhibition spaces in the Pietro Maria Bardi Building and features over 200 works by artists, activists, and social movements from 22 countries, including Colombia, Iceland, Japan, New Zealand, Peru, and Turkey. Investigating ecology as a network of relationships between living beings and their world, the exhibition brings together works from communities, territories, and ecosystems in different places and periods. 

The curatorial approach moves away from the idea of nature as something separate from society or which sees humans as hierarchically superior. “It is common for environment and ecology to be treated as synonyms. However, we chose ecology to encompass a system of relationships between humans and more than humans—animals, plants, rivers, forests, mountains, fungi, and minerals. We cannot think of nature as separate from humans,” says André Mesquita, curator at MASP. 

Curated by André Mesquita and Isabella Rjeille, curators at MASP, the exhibition reveals common artistic perspectives on ecology and confronting the effects of the global climate crisis, proposing a political reflection on the theme by highlighting the human factor and the implications of social markers of difference, such as gender, race, and class. The exhibition is divided into five thematic sections that follow a linear order: Web of Life; Geographies of Time; Becoming; Territories, Migrations and Borders; and Inhabiting the Climate.