EcoArtTech underscores that our ecosystem is infinitely more
complex and teeming with life than it may initially appear.
Consequently, their work urges viewers to value the full
spectrum of Earth's living beings. For the health of the planet and
all of its inhabitants, Nadir and Adams Peppermint offer concrete
strategies by which technology can be used to cultivate a
stronger human connection to nature rather than perpetuating its
continued use to isolate humans from the environment of which
they are an intrinsic part.
Like EcoArtTech, Maria McKinney makes evident what was
previously unseeable and therefore unknowable. Based on her
collaboration with scientists and farmers at a stud farm, the
artist presents a selection of photographs from her Sire series
which draws poetic parallels between ancient fertility rituals and
contemporary genetic breeding techniques. The photographs,
each featuring a side view of an impressively corpulent bull
alongside a much smaller human handler, are reminiscent of
British livestock paintings from the 1800s that celebrated the
wealth of the owner and promoted the virility of the animal.
However, while similar compositionally, McKinney's bovine
subjects look directly at the viewer, conveying the undeniable
power of their individual lifeforce. Additionally, in each formal
portrait, the bull carries a sculpture of its own genomic structure
or economic breeding index that the artist has constructed out
of brightly colored artificial insemination straws. Quite literally,
the once unexplained inner magic of life and regeneration is
revealed externally. McKinney handweaves her contemporary
plastic objects using the traditional patterns and craft techniques
that were used in pre-Christian Ireland to create fertility dolls out
of the harvest's final hay straw. In doing so, she effectively draws
the connection between past and present human efforts to
control nature to ensure ample food production.
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