COALITION, 15 years of art and ecology

Revealing the power of art – the power not only to alert and denounce, but also to repair and connect through gestures of care and sharing, through the power of belief at a time when knowledge alone is no longer enough to motivate action – is the challenge of the COALITION exhibition and of the commitments made by COAL over the last 15 years.

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The diversity of artistic practices linked to ecology is abundant, in terms of both content and format, making any definition or categorisation complex. The COALITION exhibition embraces the profusion of gestures, words, actions and practices that make up ‘ecological’ art. From political and symbolic action to resilience practices, witnessing, alerting and transformative practices, a new generation of artists is today helping to make change visible, to build a new collective narrative, a developing common heritage, a conscious, positive and necessary framework for everyone to find the means and inspiration to implement transformations towards a more sustainable and fairer world.

This monumental exhibition, enriched by a wide-ranging programme, is taking over the emblematic space of the Gaîté Lyrique. It is curated by Lauranne Germond, co-founder and director of COAL, and Sara Dufour, curator and programme director of the association. It brings together works and interventions by some fifty French, European and international artists, pioneers, renowned and emerging, including Angelika Markul, Shaun Gladwell, Hypercomf, Lucy+Jorge Orta, Art Orienté Objet, Fabiana Ex-Souza, Louis Guillaume, Shivay La Multiple, Paul Duncombe, Alex Cecchetti, Anaïs Tondeur, Elsa Guillaume, Suzanne Husky, Stéphanie Sagot, Feipel & Bechameil, Marie Velardi, Clément Richem, Martin Le Chevallier, Thierry Boutonnier, Beya Gilles Gacha, Erik Samakh, Laurent Tixador, Olivier Darné, Éléonore Saintagnan, Marina Gioti, Michael Wang, Momoko Seto, Sara Favriau, Stéfane Perraud et Aram Kebabdjian, Hehe and many others…

Together, they are bearing witness, imagining and experimenting with peaceful transformations of territories, ways of life, organisation and production. Through their proposals, they are trying to act on the systems at the root of the ecological crisis, to denounce them, short-circuit them and influence them; to deprogram the imaginary by writing new utopian and dystopian narratives; to build new ways of thinking about the future.
topoi
(“place, location” in Greek) on community ties, alliances with other-than-human beings, action in common, with conviviality and the power of symbol. Together, they draw the outlines of a deliberately political artistic action and a deliberately artistic political ecology.

15 years ago, bringing art and ecology together, or getting nature conservationists to work alongside cultural players and artists, was not an obvious choice. 15 years later, this convergence is becoming increasingly obvious, exacerbated by the acceleration of environmental issues, which is encouraging fundamental reflection, restructuring and the invention of new ways of living on Earth. This exhibition a panorama of a generation of committed artists through projects that have marked the history of environmental art, These are all practices and ways of approaching the living through art and the sensory, from witnessing to activism, community-building and resilience practices.

A wide variety of artistic approaches are represented. – sculpture, painting, photography, installation, performance, documents – but also and above all participatory projects, protocols, rituals, somatic practices, research-creation, in situ creation, shared experiences… Works, performances and activations tell the story of a different relationship with nature, materials and all living components, and invite us to glimpse the perspectives of a future world, through an experience marked by discovery and awakening.

COALITION

15 YEARS OF ART AND ECOLOGY

Exhibition at the Gaîté Lyrique

24 April – 2 June 2024

Exhibition launch on 23 April

Marc Domage