To understand our place within nature as part of the whole is an eminently social and existential matter. The environmental crisis and the frequency of natural disasters we have experienced last decades, including the pandemic tragedy, which in essence was caused by an ecological imbalance, indicates the urgency for a different logic of conceiving, interacting and projecting the natural world. The artistic community and its ability to expand the social mind have an essential role in creating a new value system concerning the environment, which breaks through modern anthropocentrism and the antagonism between nature and culture.

Coexisting, interacting and exchanging energy with other organisms and natural phenomena is the basis for developing the artistic works presented in Embodied Forest. From the sensitive to the rational, these works contain an effervescence of processes, poetic materials and techniques that reframe Forest in a set of plural languages. These cultural processes unfold nature by using knowledge and poetic freedom to help understand ecology in the Anthropocene and generate new sensibilities to an ethical relation to nature.

Lilian Fraiji, Juror

Artists include: (90)

Julia Adzuki, Fernanda Aloi, Nancy Azara, David Bayles, Vaughn Bell, Raina Belleau, Andrea Bersaglieri, Kellie Bornhoft
Kaitlin Bryson, Trine Bumiller, Tyler Burton, Keith D Buswell, Pamela Casper, Christina Catanese, Hannah Chalew, Catherine Chalmers, Yan Cheng, Julianne Clark, A boneca conceitual, Robert Dash, Katie DeGroot, Jeanne Dunn, Helena Elston, Sara Ekholm Eriksson, Alicia Escott, Nancy Evans, Nathalia Favaro, Jimmy Fike, Susan Hoffman Fishman, Gloria Florez, Rachel Frank, Dana Fritz, Bia Gayotto, Toni Gentilli, Annette Goodfriend, Laura Gorski, Jennifer Gunlock, Katy Gurin, Juniper Harrower, Sarah Hearn, Susan Hoenig, Basia Irland, Colin Ives, Karey Kessler, Nicole Kutz, Skooby Laposky, Jill Lear, Margaret LeJeune, Milda Lembertaitė, Walter Lewis, Hings Lim, Christopher Lin, Linda MacDonald, Chris Manfield, Aline Mare, Karen Marston, Emmy Mikelson, Fiona Morehouse, Mia Mulvey, Erika Osborne, Renata Padovan, Carol Paquet, Paula Pedrosa, Perdita Phillips, Johnny Plastini, Colleen Plumb, Laziza Rakhimova, Walmeri Ribeiro, Dawn Roe, Stuart Rome, Greg Rose, Catherine Ruane, Linda Smith, Priscilla Stadler, Krista Leigh Steinke, Claudia Tavares, Flora Temnouche, Tosca Teran, Megan Teutschel, Marie Thibeault, Chaney Trotter, Barry Underwood, Deborah Wasserman, Marie Whiteman, Ripley Whiteside, Leah Wilson, François Winants, Adam Wolpert, Nanette Wylde, Anne Yoncha.

One hundred and ninety-one ecoartspace members applied to the call for artists, and ninety were selected by guest juror Lilian Fraiji, curator of LABVERDE based in Manaus, Brazil. Countries represented by seventeen of the Embodied Forest artists outside the United States include Brazil, England, Sweden, Australia, Belgium, and Germany. The range of topics addressed is vast, including insects, breath, wildfires, birds, fungi, logging, growth rings, transpiration, mycorrhizal networks, canopy shyness, the cellular tissue of trees, forest immersion, reciprocity, trees as memories, rights of nature, trees as witnesses of history, colonial and capitalist extraction/ white supremacy, the sonification of trees, symbiotic relationships, trees as bioindicators, tree as medicines, conservation and restoration, beetle infestations, migrations of tree habitat, Indigenous knowledge, and cultural burns.

First Edition 150 copies, 268-pages SOLD OUT

Printing by Greenerprinter, Point Richmond, California USA

100% recycled, interior paper and cover

Published by ecoartspace

Edited by Patricia Watts

Design by Brett Yasko

This book was made using paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), which ensures responsible forest management. FSC is nongovernmental, non-profit organization that promotes the responsible management of the world’s forests. Chain-of-custody certification provides a guarantee about the production of FSC-certified products and is the path taken by raw materials from the forest to the consumer, including all successive stages of processing, transformation, manufacturing and distribution.

2nd Edition was printed in November 2022 SOLD OUT

JUROR

Lilian Fraiji is a curator, a producer and an environment activist based in the Amazon, Brazil. She is specialist in Cultural Management from Barcelona University and has a Master’s degree in Curating Arts from the University of Ramon Llull, Barcelona. She is the co-founder and cura-tor of LABVERDE program, a platform dedicated to development of multidisciplinary contents involving art, science, traditional knowledge and ecology. As an independent researcher, she is interested in how culture is related to nature and how landscape is shaped in the Antropocene. She has curated several art exhibitions involving Nature, including Invisible Landscape (Stand4 Gallery–NYC–2018), Irreversível (Paiol da Cultura/ INPA, Manaus 2019) and How to talk with trees (Galeria Z42–Rio de Janeiro–2019). She’s also been the guest curator for Rock in Rio Am-azon and for the open call of Natura Music Prize Brazil in 2020. Currently she is grantee of Ser-rapilheira Program, is the curator of the online Festival called Tomorrow is Now, curator of online exhibition Embodied by Forest (ecoartspace USA) and is collaborating with Sonic Mat-ter: The Witness (Swiss) and The International Week of Music of São Paulo.

Timeline

Call for Artists Deadline: May 15, 2021

Selected Artists Announced: July 1, 2021

Online Exhibition Launch: September 1, 2021

Printed Book: October 2021