Art & Well-being at EKO 8
21 May – 18 July 2021
Former MTT Factory
Ulica heroja Šaranoviča 36, Melje/Maribor, Slovenia
Art & Well-being presented four art projects for the EKO 8 Triennial – two were first presented in 2020 during the EKO 8 Prelaunch Days and were further developed for the 2021 launch of EKO 8, together with two entirely new projects.
EKO 8 exhibition A Letter to the Future was thematically evolved from a memorial plaque by the people of Iceland, marking a specific moment in time and the loss of the Okjökull glacier in Borgarfjörður. The words read: “Okjökull is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier. In the next 200 years, all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path. This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it.” The plaque was championed by the Icelandic writer Andri Snær Magnason, together with geologist Oddur Sigurðsson. It is a powerful plea. The eulogy to the glacier throws us forward into the future. It encourages us to use our imagination. These words speak to us in our precarious present.
The environment has a great effect on our well-being as we have discovered in the past year in particular, from the micro-environments of our lockdown conditions, to the macro-environment of the global climate crisis. Alessandro Vincentelli, art director of EKO 8: “It may be said we need new stories and new myths to allow us to comprehend this new predicament. Artists, in the widest sense, have a fundamental role to play in telling these stories.”
Artworks produced in the framework of Art & Well-being
In the framework of Art & Well-being, UGM Maribor Art Gallery presented a group of new artworks, created by a generation of young artists, working their way through the maddening world of today, creating new narratives that build a bridge between the present and the future and that address the relationship between the body, the mind and the environment. Along these works they created a contemplative space with a sound installation by Chris Watson, where the thin line between the hospitable and inhospitable Earth is challenged.
- Lucien Anderson, A Million Tinkered Solutions, 2021, mixed media installation
- Kara Chin, Closer Than We Think!, 2020, installation; digital animation on three screens with sound
- Harley Kuyck-Cohen, Body Farm, 2021, mixed media installation
- Chris Watson, Hverir, Iceland, 2020, 8-channel spatial sound installation
