OPEN CALL: Art and Nature in the Age of Climate Change
Volume 6, number 1 (2025)
The relationship between art and nature is not a recent phenomenon; however, it is acquiring new aspects in the face of the climate threats we are imposing on the planet. Since ancient times, nature has always sparked reflections for artists, whether as a model for mimetic representation or as an inspiring source in its creative potency. Just as nature creates its beings in an autopoietic and collaborative perspective, the artist populates the world with their objects.
Throughout art history, we find genres in which nature plays a central role, such as landscape painting or still life. These genres generate a variety of reflections that address spiritual and metaphysical questions as well as virtuous representations of the natural environment. For a long time, nature and culture were conceived as opposing and exclusive entities, distancing humans from their animal and natural context and inserting them into a cultural condition supposedly rational.
In an era where this separation can no longer be sustained, given that humanity has drastically interfered with the environment, endangering its own survival, it is necessary to rethink these relationships. Several contemporary thinkers such as Bruno Latour, Donna Haraway, Viveiros de Castro, Aylton Krenak, Emanuele Coccia, Stefano Mancuso, among others, have critically discussed the prepotent centrality of the human, urging us towards more collaborative and respectful proposals with non-humans. This is not only to ensure our own survival, but also to promote the maintenance of life in this great organism called Gaia.
The aim of this dossier is to inquire into the possibilities of art contributing to increased environmental awareness in the contemporary context. More than seeking illustrations of concepts external to artistic production, we seek to discuss the issues engendered by artworks themselves that focus on ecological concerns. How can artistic production reflect on nature, updating its relationships with historical genres and creating original poetics that stimulate new thoughts and perceptions? How can we relate activist artistic actions to the power of reflective contemplation on the natural world, intertwining spiritual, historical, political, and social aspects?
Therefore, in this dossier, we seek to publish articles and artistic propositions that offer a reflection on the growing modifications in the environment made by humans, affecting all beings beyond humans. Below are some of the themes we intend to address in this publication:
- New ways of thinking about the relationships between nature and culture, not as a dichotomy, but as a search for collaborative solutions.
- Animal, plant, and mineral intelligences and agencies. Interspecies relationships beyond human centrality.
- Contemporary artistic poetics in dialogue with and updating landscape and still life genres.
- Climate change, biodiversity loss, and artistic production.
- Ecological artivism and socio-environmental artistic actions.
- Spiritual, metaphysical, and ancestral reconnections with the natural world through art.
We prioritize collaborations where artistic production is the main trigger for reflections, rather than purely theoretical texts external to art.
Contributions can be submitted until November 30, 2024, for the sections of articles, reviews, essays, interviews, and translations, with 25,000 to 35,000 characters, including visual essays, portfolios and curatorship projects. The dossier will be published in the first semester of 2025.
The template and author guidelines can be found on the revista Estado da Arte website: http://www.seer.ufu.br/index.php/revistaestadodaarte/index.
Guest Editors:
Hugo Fortes
Visual artist and associate professor at USP
Nivalda Assunção
Visual artist and associate professor at UNB