Nature is Ancient, but Surprises Us All

The exhibition Nature Is Ancient, But Surprises Us All examines the artistic and everyday treatment of what is commonly conceived as landscape and delves deeper into it. Landscape as a surrounding space can never be equated with nature; beyond flora and fauna, it always also contains the built and the designed. Its own narratives are formed. Historical processes, climatic, social, political, geographical, and philosophical references are deeply inscribed in it. Landscape is an ever-changing habitat in which the past and the future meet. Interventions, interactions, and the human gaze are always included in the term. Nevertheless, a dichotomy between nature and culture has long persisted, involving hierarchies and creating (neo-)colonial relations of exploitation. Today the effects of these can be felt in climate change, resource scarcity, and the extinction of species, among other things. Demands for a reorganization of the relationship between humans and nature, while taking into account the global distribution of power and access to resources, are becoming increasingly visible, not least thanks to the struggles of eco-feminist movements.

The title Nature Is Ancient, But Surprises Us All is taken from Björk’s song “Nature Is Ancient / My Snare.” The exhibition brings together works that reflect, reject, or create new tensions around the binary separation of nature and culture. Generating landscape images with AI technologies, these works place themselves in the field of vision, mirror perceptions in words, question the difference between the natural and the unnatural, and reveal a range of concepts of nature.

The exhibition is the result of the SAC International Curatorial Residency Programme, the residency programme of Sant Andreu Contemporani, organised jointly with the Institut Ramon Llull and in collaboration with Fabra i Coats - Fàbrica de Creació de Barcelona, aimed at international curators.