What role do environmental issues play in your work? Current challenges - such as the melting glaciers, the extinction of plant species, the mutation of animals or pandemics, and how humanity is called to coexist with these realities - become a territory of endless learning for me and my artistic exploration becomes a way of [...]
How did environmental issues appear in your work? Was there a light-bulb moment, an influence? There was no light-bulb moment. It happened very naturally. Very early on, I became interested in our relationship to space, to the world that passes through us and that we pass through. Working in the field, in the landscape, with [...]
When did the environment first become a theme in your work? Living in Beirut, I started to smell pollution in the 2000s on the way to Fine Arts school every day. I felt that the air was very polluted and it was entering my lungs. We also had a big waste crisis a few years [...]
When did ecology first come into your work? At the School of Fine Arts in Bourges, I worked on brutalist, post-industrial architecture; then I made a study trip to Mongolia which connected me to the landscape and the natural elements - it was then that I realised I’d missed my rendezvous with the landscape up [...]
Art of Change 21 - How did you start to deal with environmental issues in your work? I have always been drawn to the natural world. My father is a geophysicist, and some of my first memories are of the small museum of geology in the building where he worked. At its entrance was an [...]
Art of change 21 - Your work has dealt with ecological issues since the 90s. How did that begin? Bigert & Bergström - We met when we were students at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. We were both regular visitors to the Biological Museum in the city which has been there since 1893. [...]
Art of Change 21 - How are you feeling and coping with the Coronavirus crisis? Lin May Saeed - I'm okay, but I think about it a lot. The feelings of powerlessness that go hand in hand with the restrictions of everyday life, which are obviously new to many, seem to contribute to radicalization. As [...]
Art of Change 21 - How did you start using recycled materials in your work? Manish Nai - Collecting old stuff is my hobby and obsession. In my daily life I am overwhelmed by it! It is time for us to understand how and why we consume the way we do and face up to [...]
Art of Change 21 - You have been working on the topic of smell for nearly thirty years, across disciplines and continents, what inspires you? Sissel Tolaas - What makes us human is that we have emotions. We are neither using our senses nor our emotions enough to understand the complexities of the world we [...]
Art of Change 21 - How are you feeling and coping with the coronavirus crisis? Jérémy Gobé - Like a brutal stop. Before the confinement arrived, I had 5 scheduled exhibitions, I was stressed and overworked. I realize that this race is a form of precariousness, which prevents taking breaks, assessments, and it is all [...]
