Special Project, Main Hall, and Garden

Curated by: Giuliana Vidarte

The beings and elements that currently coexist within ecosystems carry memories of coexistence and millennia of history. Studies of these relationships highlight the vital interconnectivity between diverse agents and the serious consequences of imbalances introduced by human interventions, which have sought to control what was constructed as nature. The research conducted by the artists brought together in the project What This Landscape Can Say About the Future explores this knowledge as a way to envision new ways of existing and cohabiting for the Earth's biological communities. These landscapes—recreated, documented, or imagined at various scales—unfold as predictions.

The movements of celestial bodies, travelers’ journals, erratic boulders, or the primordial soup from which life emerged are represented to emphasize the stories of transformation that converge in a shared origin. Drawing from science fiction, anime, and the pictorial or photographic tradition of the landscape, speculative narratives are constructed to reimagine a collective past or project visions as omens. These images seek to reveal disconnections, blur boundaries, and highlight movement and exchange: stones that travel and take on human and animal forms, fungi that expand, inert materials that follow the courses of leaves, branches, and roots, or that recreate lifeless trees. By recognizing the memory held in what we see and understand today as landscape, it becomes possible to insist that we only exist in community—and that our visions of these essential interrelations shape a memory projected toward a shared future.

Participating Artists
Juan José Barboza-Gubo, Elena Damiani, FIBRA Colectivo (Lucia Monge, Gianine Tabja, and Gabriela Flores del Pozo), Camila Rodrigo, Silvia Westphalen, and Luis Enrique Zela-Koort.