Welcome to the Anthropocene, a place characterized by polluted oceans, an altered atmosphere and mass
extinctions of plants and animals.
We’ve been living in the Holocene epoch for the past 11,7000 years, but with humans’ impact on the environment through agriculture, industrialization and urbanization, scientists have proposed that we have brought about a new epoch. Welcome to the Anthropocene, an era characterized by polluted oceans, an altered atmosphere and mass extinctions of plants and animals. In Extracted, curated for USFCAM by Megan Voeller (CL's former art critic), artists Mary Mattingly, Otobong Nkanga, Claire Pentecost, David Zink Yi and Marina Zurkow pinpoint how humans have capitalized on natural resources to the detriment of Mother Nature.
Nkanga’s video, “Remains of the Green Hill,” is one of the first pieces viewers encounter in the exhibition. She does an improvisational, yoga-inspired performance at the edge of the historic Tsumeb mine in Nothern Namibia while her interview with the previous managing director of the mine plays in the background. The director tells a conqueror’s story of discovery and glory, saying that mining makes things better for the whole: “The world is changing and, I think, for the better.” The large crater in the earth shifts the perspective from worldwide progress to environmental rape. As the interview progresses, the artist continues to balance rocks from the mine on her head. At one with nature, she seems to be hinting that all relationships with earth are about striking a balance.
Mattingly doesn’t just want compromise. Instead, she aims to reverse the effects of consumer culture. In her manifesto, she sets the grounds for non-violent economic, political and ecological orders by redefining our current systems of production, trade, and consumption. Her mixed media sculpture “Drum” is composed of her earthly possessions sandwiched between the shell of a musical drum — a lacy piece of cloth, a deck of cards, a pair of green sunglasses, a box of chocolate — all wrapped in twine to keep everything in a compact bundle. Her sculpture confronts us with our own junk, making us look back at all of our boxes, clothes and plastics and the mounds of waste they create.
In many of her works, Mattingly highlights the labor performed in producing these items, but she emphasizes maintenance (which nods to the work of Mierle Laderman Ukeles) in her photograph “Pull.” Between documentary and performance work, the artist struggles to drag a ball of her own belongings down the sidewalk. The sculpture resembles a large trash tumbleweed, as if this is what will be left on the deserted parts of our planet if we don’t start becoming more careful consumers.
Winding around corners with only one way in and one way out, the layout of the show is cleverly set up like a mining tunnel. With all of the works building to a climax, the tunnel culminates in a cave-like room and Yi's video, “The Strangers.” Two large screens are angled towards each other in conversation. On the right is a static video of the natural landscape in the southern Andes of Peru near Ayacucho. Red-stained rock formations spread out quietly across the screen in a moment of pure, unadulterated beauty. On the left side, the silence is slashed with video and sound footage of miners using heavy-duty drills to hunt for gold and silver.
The miners yell indecipherably at each other through their armor as they inspect the work they’ve done. Abruptly, this screen changes back to a different view of Peru’s rock formations, so both monitors present the natural landscape. Though the room is quiet for once, viewers' ears still ring from the vibrations of the machinery. Just as one starts getting accustomed to the silence, the right-hand screen suddenly changes to more mining footage, with the men using large picks to hack away at the earth. With these jarring juxtapositions of visuals and sounds, Yi creates an unsettling video installation that asks the question: Are we the strangers on this planet?
Combining conceptual or fact-based works with emotional or visceral pieces, this exhibition is chilling in its deadpan representation of the Anthropocene. Not only are the works themselves powerful, but the global context of this show couldn’t be more relevant with the Dakota Access Pipeline trying to push through the midwest, Alabama’s pipeline leak and — even closer to home — the radioactive leak into the Florida aquifer from Mosaic’s phosphate plant.
Whether you believe we are in the Anthropocene or not, the unpredictable changes in our environment can’t be ignored. Digging is one thing, but extracting something infers that what the earth has to offer is up for the taking — and it’s being greedily taken with brute force.
Extracted.
Through Dec. 10. USF Contemporary Art Museum. 4202 East Fowler Ave., Tampa.
This article appears in Sep 22-29, 2016.