Into the Woods

More than ever, the world’s forests have become monuments to the imbalances found on our planet. Forests filter water and air, and supply resources and food. As habitats for the majority of terrestrial animals, forests are beneficial to human health, and, as vital carbon stores, help stabilize the planet’s climate. Logging and the profit-oriented exploitation of woodlands are accelerating the ecological crisis while climate change fuels deforestation.

Artistic perspectives on various forest regions of the world—from the Amazon rainforest, to the Embobut Forest in Kenya, to the primeval forests of the Carpathians, to the Swiss pine forests, and to local woodlands—address pressing issues surrounding this sensitive ecosystem. On the one hand, the works in the exhibition engage with human influence on the condition and destruction of forests, and, on the other hand, with the collective and symbiotic nature of the forest ecosystem. Into the Woods speaks to reckless deforestation, the effects of forest monocultures, the tensions that exists between economic forest use and sustainable conservation, the financialization of the climate crisis, the threat to woodlands due to global warming, as well as the ecological processes and complex interrelations at the core of the forest ecosystem.

The artists in the exhibition bring to light the pivotal role that forests play for the health and stability of our planet. Research-based, enlightening, and poetic works—some of which were developed in cooperation with scientists—make this complex topic feel tangible, and offer new perspectives on an ecosystem that is seemingly all too familiar.

Artists
Rodrigo Arteaga, Anca Benera & Arnold Estefán, Eline Benjaminsen & Elias Kimaiyo, Alma Heikkilä, Monica Ursina Jäger, Markus Jeschaunig, Isa Klee, Susanne Kriemann, Jeewi Lee, Antje Majewski, Richard Mosse, Katie Paterson, Oliver Ressler , Abel Rodríguez, Diana Scherer, Rasa Šmite & Raitis Šmits

Curator
Sophie Haslinger

Scientific cooperation
Institute of Social Ecology and Institute of Forest Ecology, University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences, Vienna

Exhibition Catalogue
With essays by Karlheinz Erb and Simone Gingrich, Sophie Haslinger, and Michael Marder.
200 pages, German/English, numerous colour illustrations, 17 x 24 cm, softcover
published by Spector Books, ISBN 978-3-95905-826-1
EUR 28