From the Earth is an exhibition at Minneapolis College of Art and Design curated by Melanie Pankau. From the Earth brings together eight artists who explore our intricately-connected relationship to the natural world. Their diverse practices center around the poetic use of terrene materials, interior and exterior places, and how the disengagement with our bodies is linked to the environmental crisis.

The exhibition is inspired by environmental activist and Buddhist scholar, Joanna Macy’s theory of the “The Great Turning”­— described as an epochal global evolution from the industrial growth society to life sustaining civilization. Macy outlines three dimensions of “The Great Turning”: Holding Actions—activism that slows down the industrial growth society’s damage to the earth; Structural Change—replacing outdated and destructive systems with new structural alternatives; Shift in Consciousness­—the development of the ecological self by cultivating awareness of our non-separateness from the world by acknowledging the earth is our larger body.

The exhibition addresses the question: What is the artist’s role in “The Great Turning?” The artist becomes a visual communicator of these dimensions of transformation by engaging the viewer’s body as a living system through the interconnectivity of materials, encountering our humanness through images of the inner and outer worlds we inhabit, and broadening our perception of time, from short-term thinking to contemplating deep, ecological time.

Participating Artists:

Tom Bierlein

Mira Burack

Torey Erin

Marcella Ernest

Keli Mashburn

Elsa Muñoz

Leah Meridoc Nguyen

Meg Ojala