Ecospheres aims to address ecology, the environment, climate and the natural world through the concept of making-with (living with). Based on the elements of Water, Air and Earth, the exhibition is divided into three Atmosphere Rooms. These Atmospheres function as conceptual spaces that foreground and amplify various artists and artworks in relation to the themes of the exhibition. Water is engaged as a mediator connecting the natural world to people, places and identity. The properties of Air as both a political and poetic construct are examined through the bonds of kinship, migration, diaspora and the lingering effects of atmospheric violence. The section on Earth embodies ideas of indigenous knowledge and sustainability, exploring how local indigenous knowledge informs the creation of ideas that shape art, culture and food.
The exhibition is an immersive experience that includes installations of hydroponic plants, oceanic-inspired knitted textile, botanic photography, sound and meditative paintings of migratory birds. Visitors also have the opportunity to enjoy a newly built Reading Room within the gallery. This space, designed by Wolff Architects, serves as a library for one book: the Ecospheres Reader, and is intended for convivial gatherings and discussions.
Ecospheres forms part of JCAF’s second research theme: Worldmaking. The human drive towards meaning-making leads us to both consciously and unconsciously build our world from social conditioning, scientific rationality, artistic traditions and our own struggle for survival. Worldmaking refers to the ways we collectively make the spaces around us that we inhabit through symbolic practices. JCAF will explore this concept through a trilogy of exhibitions, along with an accompanying series of talks and publications.
Read the publications: Ecospheres Reader 1 and Ecospheres Reader 2.
Explore the virtual tour of the exhibition below.
The first section of the exhibition considers the environment poetically. Here, artists from the Global South engage with the idea of water as connected to places, people and identity, and as an element that can be experienced as “under the sea”, as “rain”, as a “flood” or as “contained in vessels”. Intense colours play an important part in representing the concepts in the various artworks, alongside vernacular objects from local indigenous sources.
Here we see water is “sea”, “river delta”, “contained in a vessel” and “rain”. Conceptually, water is an expression of a community’s identity, summoned as rain, preserved to sustain life and to inspire ideas about our natural and biological world in oral narratives.
Installation views of ATMOSPHERE 1. Water: Narrative and Myth-Making: Ernesto Neto, Um dia todos fomos peixes (One day we were all fish) (2017). © Ernesto Neto; Rithika Merchant, Transtidal (2022). © Rithika Merchant (2022); Zizipho Poswa, uNa’kaMzingisi (Mzingisi’s Mother) (2024). © Zizipho Poswa; Bronwyn Katz, Kai tus tu (Great rain rain) (2023). © Bronwyn Katz. Photos Graham De Lacy.
Atmosphere 2 may give us a renewed appreciation for the properties of air, both as a political and poetic construct. Here the artists draw out the atmospheric effects of air as a field of transcendental form that blurs the line between earth and sky. Finally the bonds of kinship and diaspora are explored through a consideration of migratory patterns. In these ways, air becomes vision, breath and flight.
Here air is a habitat, a realm that sustains movement and in which migrating birds are metaphors for human diasporas. Air is also introduced as a malleable substance, as different forms of wind produce the environmental devastation of soil in Ethiopia or the atmospheric violence of thunderstorms in Johannesburg. How might the air around us – manifest as the powerful effects of wind and storms on our environment and the spaces we inhabit – compel us to rethink our relationship to kin?
Installation views of ATMOSPHERE 2. Air: Migration and Kin: Michael Tsegaye, Ankober (2007) and Afar II (2023). © Michael Tsegaye; Sutapa Biswas, Time Flies (2004–2021). © Sutapa Biswas. All Rights Reserved. DACS 2024. Jonah Sack, Thunderstorm Typology (2020) and Cloud Tower (2023). © Jonah Sack. Photos Graham De Lacy
In Atmosphere 3, several of the artworks feature seeds and entire plants growing hydroponically for the duration of the exhibition. These works speak of the diversity of nature and the complexity of plant life, but also reflect on indigenous knowledge and environmental sustainability. Each of the artists in this section of the exhibition draw from local knowledge and experience in the form of sound, typologies and moving images, suggesting a shift from identity to locality and proposing new concepts for the relationship between humanity and planet earth.
Plants and soil feature in various ways: in the biography of a seed told through an audible story, in micro-representations of the hidden life of plants, in the germination of seedlings, in the exploration of sustainable forms of production, and in reflections on the consequences of unscrupulous resource extraction.
Installation views of ATMOSPHERE 3. Earth: Indigenous Knowledge and Extraction: Zina Saro-Wiwa, Karikpo Pipeline (2015). © Zina Saro-Wiwa; Zayaan Khan and Coila-Leah Enderstein, Seeds from the Streets to the Seas (2019). © Zayaan Khan and Coila-Leah Enderstein; Mater Iniciativa, Ecosistemas Mater (2024) with details of Alejandra Ortiz de Zevallos, Khipuy, Earthen, Peruvian ceramists in collaboration with Mater, and Territorio relief table with pockets containing ingredients from the three regions of Peru (coast/Sierra/jungle) developed by Mater, designed and manufactured by BIGO Project; Russell Scott, Botanical Portraits Unearthed (2008–17); Ximena Garrido-Lecca, Insurgencias botánicas: Phaseolus lunatus (Botanical insurgencies: Phaseolus lunatus) (2017). © Ximena Garrido-Lecca. Photo Graham De Lacy
Sutapa Biswas (1962–) was born in Santiniketan, India and is based in London. She holds a postgraduate degree from the Slade School of Art (1990) and was a research student of Philosophy at the Royal College of Art (1996–1998). Group exhibitions include Identity and Environment, Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest (1999) and Miami Basel (2006). Solo exhibitions include Lumen, New Art Gallery Walsall, UK (2021); Recent Works by Sutapa Biswas, Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College, Portland, Oregon (2006); Harewood House, Yorkshire; Café Gallery Projects, London (2004).
Coila-Leah Enderstein (1990–) is a pianist, artist and performer born in Cape Town and based in Berlin. She graduated with a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Cape Town’s College of Music (2012) where she was awarded the Lional Bowman Prize for Beethoven Playing and the Laura Searle Prize for Concerto Playing. Enderstein is completing her Master of Arts in Sound Studies at the University of the Arts in Berlin.
Ximena Garrido-Lecca (1980–) was born in Lima. She studied Visual Arts at the Universidad Católica del Perú and received her MA from Byam Shaw School of Art, London. Solo exhibitions include Ximena Garrido-Lecca: Paisaje Antrópico, Max Wigram Gallery, London (2012); Faz escuro mas eu canto, 34th São Paulo Biennale (2020).
Bronwyn Katz (1993–) was born in Kimberley, South Africa. She obtained a BaFA (Hons) from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town in 2015. Solo exhibitions include A Silent Line, Lives Here (2018), Palais de Tokyo, Paris. Group exhibitions include Venice Biennale (2022); 22nd Sydney Biennale (2020); 12th Dak’Art Biennale (2016).
Zayaan Khan (1984–) was born in Cape Town and is completing her PhD in Environmental Humanities South at the University of Cape Town. Solo exhibitions include The Apocalypse Pantry (with Heather Thompson), A4 Art Foundation, Cape Town (2016). Group exhibitions include Seeds as Relation (2019), part of Soil is an Inscribed Body. On Sovereignty and Agropoetics, SAVVY Contemporary at Beni Aïssi, Morocco and Berlin; Trammakassie, Permanent Environmental Exhibition, Simonstown Museum, Cape Town.
MATER, founded by siblings Malena and Virgilio Martinez, is an interdisciplinary organization that seeks to articulate the multicultural and profoundly biodiverse territory of Peru, by integrating knowledge through research, interpretation, and cultural expressions. The work of Mater involves designing gastronomic concepts with identity, such as Central and Kjolle in Lima and Mil, and in Cusco, where Mater’s field work is carried out as an immersive cultural and gastronomic experience that involves an everyday exchange with both neighbouring communities and the landscape they share, facing the archaeological site of Moray. The installation presented on Ecospheres was produced in collaboration with:
Alejandra Ortiz de Zevallos Rodrigo is a Peruvian textile artist pursuing an MFA at the University of New Mexico. She leads workshops on natural fibre braiding, drawing from traditional techniques learned during her 2019 residency at Mater in Moray, Cusco. Her work has been included in exhibitions at Galería del Paseo; Museo de Arte de Lima; PaRC PINTA 2022; and Galería La Mancha. Her debut solo was Nudos como cuerpos como nudos, SED – Dédalo gallery, Lima (2022). She is preparing for a solo exhibition at the Amano Museum in July 2024.
BIGO PROJECT (Bio Inputs – Generative Outputs) stems from an interdisciplinary research-creation project developed at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (PUCP), intertwining ecology, art, design, science and engineering. It explores processes and methodologies for generating and constructing objects by blending manual techniques with analogue and digital technologies. The BIGO team consists of Veronica Crousse and Octavio Centurión (sculptors), Ricardo Torres and Paula Cermeño (industrial designers).
Isabella Celis is a visual artist at the Universidad de los Andes (CO) and a researcher who studies sustainability and decolonial thought. Her practice interweaves knowledge and multispecies, bringing the Andes and the Amazon into dialogue. She explores textile practices as a place of regeneration and bonding in the ecologies of beings in which we live.
Rithika Merchant (1986–) was born in Mumbai. In 2008 she obtained a BFA (Honours) (Fine Arts) from Parsons School of Design, New York, and in 2021 was awarded the Sovereign Asian Art Prize, the Vogue Hong Kong Women’s Art Prize and the Le Prix Dessin, Paris. Solo exhibitions include Worlds Within Words, Fábrica do Braço de Prata, Lisbon (2009). Group exhibitions include Barcelona Showcase, Casa Batllo, Barcelona (2011); Bonna Dhaka Art Summit, Dhaka, Bangladesh (2023).
Ernesto Neto (1964–) was born in Rio de Janeiro. He studied at the Escola de Artes Visuais Parque Lage in 1994 and 1997, and attended the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro from 1994 to 1996. Solo exhibitions include Genealogy of Life, Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart (2002); Water Falls from my Breast to the Sky, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2020); Between Earth and Sky, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York (2022).
Zizipho Poswa (1979–) was born in Mthatha, South Africa and is based in Cape Town. She graduated with a National Diploma in Textile Design from the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in 2009 and studied surface design at the Cape Peninsula University. Solo exhibitions include iLobola, Southern Guild, Cape Town (2021). Group exhibitions include Ideas in Transit, Akademie der Kunste, Hamburg (2018); Investec Cape Town Art Fair (2023).
Rebecca Potterton (1996–) is a freelance illustrator based in Johannesburg. She has a BA (Honours) in History from the University of the Witwatersrand (2020). In her capacity as illustrator and researcher for Counterspace Studio, Potterton illustrated for: “Architecture’s Now, Near, and Next” published by the Solomn R. Guggenheim Museum; the Serpentine Pavilion, London (2021); the installation of After Image by Sumayya Vally/Counterspace as part of Liminal Identities in the Global South, Joburg Contemporary Art Foundation (2021).
Jonah Sack (1978–) is based in Cape Town. He received his MFA from the Glasgow School of Art, and has been a fellow of the Skye Foundation and the Gordon Institute for Performing and Creative Arts at the University of Cape Town. Solo exhibitions include Catalogue of Errors, Blank Projects, Cape Town (2017). Group exhibitions include Holdfast, The Gallery, Johannesburg (2020); Invisible Exhibition, Centre for the Less Good Idea, Johannesburg (2019).
Zina Saro-Wiwa (1976–) was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria and raised in Surrey and Sussex, United Kingdom. She studied Economic and Social History at Bristol University and transitioned into art in 2010. Solo exhibitions include Did You Know We Taught Them How To Dance?, Blaffer Museum, Houston (2015); Table Manners, Art Basel Miami Beach, Miami (2018). Group exhibitions include The Progress of Love, Pulitzer Foundation, St Louis, MO, and Menil Collection, Houston (2012).
Russell Scott (1961–) was born in Kitwe, Zambia and lives in South Africa. After obtaining his ND (Fine Arts) at the Technikon Witwatersrand in the late 1980s, he lectured in the Department of Fine Arts at the Technikon. Scott has spent many years working as a professional photographer and model-maker.
Michael Tsegaye (1975–) was born in Addis Abba where he lives and works. He received a Diploma from Addis Ababa University’s School of Fine Arts and Design in 2002. Group and solo exhibitions include Medecins Sans Frontiers, National Museum Addis Ababa (2011); For a Sustainable World, 9th Bamako Encounters – African Photography Biennale, Mali (2011); Selam Arts Festival, Toronto (2010); Hotel Dystopia Room #25/55, Al Bastakiya Art Fair, Dubai (2010); Aksum Rediscovered: the Reinstallation of the Obelisk, the UNESCO House, Paris (2009). Tsegaye also works as a photographer for publications such as Der Spiegel and Jeune Afrique, and press agencies such as Bloomberg and Reuters.
Wolff Architects is a design studio concerned with developing an architectural practice of consequence through the mediums of design, advocacy, research and documentation. The Wolff team is led by Ilze and Heinrich Wolff who work collaboratively with a group of committed and engaged architects, creative practitioners and administrators. Heinrich Wolff has received many awards including the Daimler Chrysler Award for Architecture (2007) and the Lubetkin Award (2005). In 2011 he was elected Designer of the Future by the Wouter Mikmak Foundation. Ilze Wolff has a Master of Philosophy in Heritage and Public Culture from the African Studies Unit, University of Cape Town. She co-founded Open House Architecture in 2007, a transdisciplinary research practice which she continues to direct parallel to Wolff.
