Actions for the Earth: Art, Care & Ecology is a traveling exhibition that considers kinship, healing, and restorative interventions as artistic practices and strategies to foster a deeper consciousness of our interconnectedness with the earth.
On View from January 30 – April 19, 2025.
Open Wednesdays – Saturdays from 10AM – 1PM and 2PM – 6PM.
Closed during UC Merced's Spring Break (March 23 – April 1)
A recent overlapping of worldwide crises related to ongoing climate change, entrenched social inequity, and renewed concerns over public health has underscored the need for complex approaches. It has become necessary to assume global responsibilities while caring for our local environment; to find new antidotes to oppressive structures of power; to grasp nature, health, and sustainability as intertwined.
For decades, artists have sought greater understanding of this interconnectedness, drawing from multiple disciplines beyond established art practices. Actions for the Earth presents the work of eighteen artists and collectives who foreground reciprocity and exchange in their work by sharing participatory interventions, healing practices, ecology and science, as well as ancient beliefs. The artists create space for honoring ancestors, the significance of Indigenous knowledges, and engage in fantastical speculation through science-fiction and organic, digital, and spiritual network sciences.
Actions for the Earth is a resource for current times, reminding us that we are connected within a constellation of living networks, inseparable from the earth. The exhibition emphasizes learning, care, and intimacy, inviting its publics to participate in instruction-based meditation and deep listening among other actions. During the tour, projects will generate site-specific exchanges between the artists, the environment, and local communities, growing and changing over time.
Artists: Ackroyd and Harvey, Lhola Amira, Arahmaiani, Sayan Chanda, Hylozoic/Desires (Himali Singh Soin & David Soin Tappeser), lololol, Ana Mendieta, Zarina Muhammad, Patrina Munuŋgurr, Pauline Oliveros, Yoko Ono, Tabita Rezaire, Eric-Paul Riege, Cecilia Vicuña, Katie West, and Zheng Bo
About "Actions for the Earth"
Curator
Actions for the Earth: Art, Care & Ecology is curated by Sharmila Wood. Wood is a Perth, Western Australia-based independent curator who works on creative and cultural initiatives producing, curating, and commissioning artwork. She is interested in interdisciplinary approaches around environmental, social, and spatial justice and conceptualizes socially engaged processes to make art interventions. Wood has held arts positions in New Delhi, Los Angeles, Sydney, and Perth, edits books and writes regularly for arts publications and journals. She holds a Masters of Art History & Curatorship from the University of Sydney and is currently Director of Tarruru, where she continues her work across borders.
Exhibition Credits
Actions for the Earth: Art, Care & Ecology is a traveling exhibition curated by Sharmila Wood and produced by Independent Curators International (ICI), New York. Lead funding is provided by the Hartfield Foundation as part of an initiative to support ICI’s commitment to new curatorial voices who will shape the future of the field, and ICI’s Curatorial Intensive alumni as they move through the stages of their career. Actions for the Earth is made possible with the generous support of ICI’s Board of Trustees and International Forum. Exhibition graphics by Untitled Agency, Marrakesh.
The presentation at UC Merced's La Galería has been organized in collaboration with UC Merced Arts and was coordinated by Grace Garnica, Gallery Manager, and Collin Lewis, Executive Director for the Arts.
