Weather Report: Forecasting Future is themed around the complex and varied relations between the human and nonhuman in an age when climate change and mass extinction are threatening the future of life on Earth. The exhibition was seen in the Nordic Pavilion at the Venice Biennale last year.
When imagining the future, humans face the responsibility of acknowledging multispecies entanglements and the need to renegotiate existing interspecies relations.
It is often difficult for humans to notice life forms that exist on a scale different from theirs, such as microscopic organisms, the slow workings of toxic agents, or durational processes of decaying organic matter. By heightening the visitors’ awareness of the materiality of the space and the artworks, and by assimilating their bodies to other life forms, the exhibition attempts to establish a connection with more-than-human agencies.
Featured artists
nabbteeri
Artist duo nabbteeri (Janne Nabb & Maria Teeri, Finland) gather the materials on site and incorporate recycled objects that evolve into mesh-like installations. Their works are compositions based on interactions between the artists and other things, including nonhuman organisms. They often focus on the tiniest life forms, minute species co-existing with us.
Ane Graff
Ane Graff (Norway) creates works that combine her material research with a broad range of research disciplines, e.g. microbiology and chemistry. Through her installations, she confronts the allegedly stable, science- and culture-based classifications, while asking how notions of human exceptionalism and dualistic thinking are connected to the ecological crisis.
Ingela Ihrman
Ingela Ihrman (Sweden) weaves together imagination, craft techniques, as well as sensibilities and personal experiences in her objects, moving images and texts. Her algae installation tells a story of the liquid origins of human bodies and the existing connections between diverse lifeforms.
Publication
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue available at Kiasma shop.
Collaboration
The 2019 project in the Nordic Pavilion was a joint effort by Moderna Museet from Sweden, Office for Contemporary Art (OCA) Norway, and Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma. Kiasma was in charge of the production of the exhibition.
Weather Report: Forecasting Future is supported by the Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation, the Saastamoinen Foundation, and the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture.
After Kiasma the exhibition travels to Kuntsi Museum of Modern Art in Vaasa.