Grounded Being
OPENS WED, MAY 1 — 7.30PM
Landscapes are not inert, rather, they exist as dense aggregates of memory and material. Here, bodies entangle spaces, intrinsically, exquisitely, but also with great turbulence. To examine a Southern landscape is to observe the balance between the people and their surroundings and how detrimental it can be to fracture this. Often, an artist’s role is to imagine how it might be restored. The exhibition celebrates the embodied experience of nativity, inviting visitors to explore the intricate relationship between the human body and the source of its sustenance. It reminds one, that embedded within the practices of the Global South is a truth about ones body—the cultures constructed are not separate from the natural world, rather an ingenious extension of the land.
Bringing together the works of various photographers, Grounded Being examines the nuanced personal, political, social, and cultural relationships between the body and land. Works on view will be up for sale through Gulf Photo Plus Editions, providing an opportunity to support GPP and regional photographers. The curated selection responds to traditions and practices from historical and contemporary Global South contexts to understand nativity, indigeneity and the human relation to place. They investigate these concepts through social documentary, research-based practices, and conceptual works as they seek to speak across scales, proposing the many ways in which a person can inhabit, and be inhabited by, their landscape, creating a nexus between the health of a human and the vitality of their surroundings. As, nurturing the earth, it suggests, is at the root of any philosophy that seeks to nurture one’s self.
Works on view are available for sale here