Ocean Acidification

Fragile Beauty explores the powerful allure of nature alongside its delicate state today. Featuring site-specific installations by Beatriz Chachamovits, Mira Lehr, and Lauren Shapiro, the exhibition brings together works by local Miami artists that reflect on climate change and human impact on our oceans, coral reefs, and rapidly shifting environment. 

Working across installation and performance, Chachamovits’ draws attention to the effects of ocean acidification in her ephemeral installations of unfired clay sculptures submerged in water. Along with extreme temperature fluctuations, ocean acidification can cause coral reefs to dissolve and disintegrate, significantly impacting reefs across Florida. The resulting works, when activated, expose the public to different stages of ocean acidification and its effects on coral. 

Shapiro’s practice too experiments with art’s possibility to affect change and cultivate a broad awareness of our environment. Working alongside ecologists to understand and narrate nature, Shapiro merges craft, science and technology to document disappearing ecosystems as sculptural ceramic archives.

Whereas Chachamovits and Shapiro consider environmental threats to marine ecosystems, Lehr’s immersive installations pay homage to mangrove trees, which protect coastlines against hurricanes and serve as nurseries for aquatic life. Threatened by rising sea levels, urban development, and human activities, mangroves in Florida, while protected by law, continue to fall victim to deforestation.

Utilizing different media to convey the elegance of our aquatic ecosystems and cultivate a broad awareness of their delicacy, the participating artists draw attention to the environmental challenges we face in Florida and the actions we can take to reverse them. Fragile Beauty is a celebration of nature, yet at the same time a call for awareness and action to preserve it for generations to come.

Details

Date: January 4

Website: https://jmof.fiu.edu/exhibitions-events/exhibitions/environmental-art-fragile-beauty/index.html

Venue

Florida International University-Jewish Museum of Florida

301 Washington Avenue
Miami Beach, FL 33139 United States

Phone:786.972.3176

Website: https://jmof.fiu.edu/

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Three current Visual Arts students, Linnéa Gad, Vivian Vivas, and Char Jeré, were shortlisted for the Frankenthaler Climate Art Awards.

Presented by Asia Society and the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, the Frankenthaler Climate Art Awards aim to foster climate change awareness through the imagination and insights of an upcoming generation of visual artists. This important award offers three winners $15,000 and honors in Washington, D.C. on the occasion of Asia Society’s COAL + ICE exhibition.

Gad’s work centers around the material lime and “examines how CO2 levels and the acidification of the sea are intertwined with the lifecycle of the mineral,” according to the Frankenthaler website. Working within the medium of sculpture, she works only with lime which is contained in every material she uses such as oyster shells, lapis lazuli, and cement. In so doing, Gad tries to highlight lime’s “diversity and its willingness to bind with different versions of itself.”

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Columbia University School of the Arts, 4 May 2022. More information.

“Ocean Filibuster” is onstage at the A.R.T.’s Loeb Drama Center through Sunday, March 13. An online version will be available to stream March 9-27 and the producers plan to take it on tour.

According to a recent United Nations report, climate change is causing irreparable damage to farmland, cities and coastlines. Environmentalists say getting the public to act on dire news like this is hard, but Harvard University scientists collaborating with the American Repertory Theater believe an immersive musical experience will help.

“Ocean Filibuster” stars a bold, battered, billions-of-years-old main character: the Ocean.

“No, I’m not here on behalf of the ocean, I’m not standing in for the ocean,” actor Jennifer Kidwell clarifies on stage early in the production, “I am the Ocean.”

She actually portrays two characters in “Ocean Filibuster” — that immense body of water, and she also plays against herself as a polished politician named Mr. Majority.

In the opening scene, Mr. Majority addresses a global senate in a dystopian future. The theater is set up like a government chamber and the audience plays a part in the proceedings. Mr. Majority tells us how superstorms, wildfires and drought have ravaged the planet. Cities like New York and Tokyo are underwater.

“Coastal landslides displacing entire countries, forcing the desperate masses inland, penniless and hungry to start anew,” he says. “When we trace this devastation back to the source, we find ourselves standing on a beach, gazing upon the ocean.”

Continue reading ‘Ocean acidification in E minor’

Performers swimming in the lighted water of Hirschengraben Indoor Swimming Pool in Bern during an artistic performance by Swiss visual artist Pipilotti Rist and World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) to denounce the disappearance of corals due to warming and acidification of the ocean. Photo courtesy: AFP

Continue reading ‘Save the corals’

Striking conceptual photography is once again a major component of Christine Ren’s latest conservation campaign, called Carbonated Ocean

Last time we were in touch with performer, filmmaker, and underwater “artivist” Christine Ren, we had an insightful discussion about her (then) project about ghost fishing titled Silent Killers. Now, she’s back with a new website and another evocative project centered on marine conservation. This time, she zeroes in on climate change’s lesser known evil twin, ocean acidification.

Continue reading ‘“Carbonated Ocean” photos raise awareness for climate change’s lesser known evil twin’