Art Works Downtown Launches Climate Change Art Exhibition Just Weeks After COP21

January 8–February 26,2016
Receptions: January 8, 5–8pm + February 12, 5–8pm

 

San Rafael-based art center Art Works Downtown launches Climate Change exhibition just weeks after Paris climate talk and COP21.  The Climate Change exhibition aims to inspire stewardship of the planet by showcasing artists’ visions of adaptation and responses to our changing environment.

Artists depict the subject of climate change in a visual dialogue introducing viewers to the complexities that people, governments and societies face when envisioning Climate Change. Climate change within the Anthropocene epoch is based on human activities that generate anthropogenic, greenhouse gases, distinct from the greenhouse gases naturally present in the atmosphere. These emissions alter the atmosphere’s composition, causing the increased greenhouse effect that is leading to global warming. The exhibition explores issues that led up to it and what it means to adapt to Climate Change.

In December 12, 2015, 195 countries signed an historic global climate agreement in Paris, France. Artists instinctively captured the range of topics nations addressed at the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris, such as global warming, extinction, migration, mitigation, and adaptation.

“We experience in this diverse exhibition how artists are wrestling with and interpreting the vast array of complex climate change topics such as environmental ecosystems at risk, commentary on the political-economic players, and highly intrapersonal struggles humans experience,” says April Bucksbaum, Executive Director of The Baum Foundation. “We see through these selected works the power of art to communicate on a truly visceral level. Artists approach these topics from many angles through work that is literal, abstract, expressive, or refined.”

Art Works Downtown offers a new platform for artists to lead the community in an exploration of the local–as well as the global–implications of climate change, providing potential for hope and peril. Through these selected works, Art Works Downtown hopes to inspire the audience to engage in discussion, both at the exhibition and in their daily lives, to educate themselves and be empowered to make a difference.

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