Ali Cherri | Patricia Dominguez | Hessie | Karrabing Film Collective | Candice Lin
total climate is a three-part exhibition reflecting upon the relationship between colonial history and ecological crisis. Inspired by discourses exploring the links between social inequality, structural racism and environmental deterioration, total climate presents the work of artists whose practices conjure the interwovenness of natural and historical processes, exposing the way in which natural exploitation, cultural domination and territorial possession are often part of the same imperial gesture.
After having analysed how historical mechanisms and trauma are embedding themselves within the material composition of the environment in part 1: the infinitesimal and the mobile (Jun – Jul 2022), part 2: wavelengths (Jun – Jul 2023) focuses its attention on notions of knowledge and sensibilities, examining how colonialism operates within the formation of 'intellectual climates'.
Featuring works by Ali Cherri, Patricia Domínguez, Hessie, Karrabing Film Collective and Candice Lin, this group exhibition aims to deconstruct ideologies hidden behind given forms of knowledge and practices – e.g. scientific objectivity, taxonomy, museology –, while promoting modes of seeing, doing and being that allow for alternative understandings and tellings of the environment.
It is in that perspective that the title of this chapter was chosen. Designating the distance between two consecutive waves which, by expanding and overlapping, can occupy more than one position at any moment in time, wavelengths evoke the idea of an object that can be simultaneously localised and extended, implying that the nature of what is observed changes according to the position of the observer. As such, it suggests an alternative to the Cartesian distinction between subject and object, in favour of a multiplication of ‘points of view’ from which the environment and the different cultures of which it is composed can be apprehended – whether they are, or not, ‘on the same wavelength’.
Within this framework, the artists in the exhibition re/de-contextualise the inherited dualisms of culture/nature, science/belief, language/matter. Whether through sculpture, photography, weaving techniques or moving image, the artworks presented consider the way in which these registers have been defined and dialecticised, scrutinising the ideologies their opposition serves, consolidates and normalises.
Indeed, the processes whereby certain ways of producing and communicating discourses are in/validated follow the same logic as the Modern separation between human and non-human beings, as well as the colonial principles establishing hierarchies between some and other humans.
Proposing an extension of the notion of knowledge that no longer differentiates thinking and feeling, the artists in wavelengths invite us to apprehend nature and history in ways that are not limited to rational analysis, promoting instead modes of encountering the environment that can hold a multiplicity of standpoints while embracing incompleteness, emotions and sensations.
total climate is curated by artist Gaëlle Choisne, NıCOLETTı’s director Camille Houzé, and curator and researcher Estelle Marois.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a performance by artist and musician Rieko Whitfield on Sunday 4 June, 3 – 6 pm, on the occasion of the London Gallery Weekend. In Songwriting Seance, Whitfield will lead multisensory guided meditations and automatic writing sessions, inviting participants to embody the multiplicity of their lived experience and higher selves.
Link to the first chapter of total climate: https://nicoletticontemporary.com/2022/06/total-climate-part-1-the-infinitesimaland-the-mobile/