Humane Ecology

A presentation of eight contemporary artists whose work considers environmental questions in terms of their social and political implications. "Humane Ecology: Eight Positions" features a group of contemporary artists who consider the intertwined natural and social dimensions of environmental questions: Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio, Korakrit Arunanondchai, Carolina Caycedo, Allison Janae Hamilton, Juan Antonio Olivares, Christine Howard Sandoval, Pallavi Sen, and Kandis Williams. These artists – through their work in sculpture, video, sound installation, and plantings – think in the relational terms implied by ecology, the study of how organisms relate to one another and their environment. They explore themes such as the extraction and exploitation of both places and people, kinships with the more-than-human world, and ancient traditions of relation to the land that take on new urgency and form. Against posthumanist tendencies to "decenter" the human, these artists center different humans, ones routinely excluded from dominant discourses of environmentalism. The publication presents entries on each artist in addition to scholarly essays on the exhibition concept, genealogies of land art, and settler colonial histories of the Berkshires.