Greenwashing. Environment: Perils, Promises and Perplexities

Greenwash : the act of misleading consumers regarding the environmental practices of a company or the environmental benefits of a product or service.

Exhibition
Turin, Italy
February 29th - May 11th 2008
Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo

Artists: Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla, Lara Almárcegui, Maria Thereza Alves, Ibon Aranberri, Amy Balkin, The Bruce High Quality Foundation, Chu Yun, A Constructed World, Minerva Cuevas, Ettore Favini, Cyprien Gaillard, Tue Greenfort, Norma Jeane, Cornelia Parker, Jorge Peris, Wilfredo Prieto, RAF / Reduce Art Flights, Tomás Saraceno, Santiago Sierra, Simon Starling, Fiona Tan, Nikola Uzunovski, Sergio Vega, Wang Jianwei and James Yamada.
Curated by Ilaria Bonacossa and Latitudes

"GREENWASHING presents the work of 25 international artists and artist-groups whose practice suggests that the literalism embedded in old-fashioned concepts such as 'environmentalism' and 'nature' are not equipped to comprehend the ecological territory of our time. Today we negotiate an evermore urgent and pervasive ecological (and thereby cultural, political, social and economic) arena that is darkly shadowed by potentially catastrophic ecosystemic collapse. In the face of a constant bombardment of eco-economic guilt, corporate agendas and political point-scoring, what might emerge is genuine perplexity and false promises, though still possibly capable of unleashing creative change.

The terminology and agency around 'the environment' and sustainability has become increasingly asymmetric and immaterial. Emissions' offsetting, food miles, environmental marketing, carbon debt, ecological footprints, and so on, are all recently-coined terms, tied to the anxious sense that the processes and practices of modernisation and globalisation, industrialisation and urbanisation have induced unprecedented deprivations and intrusions on the planet. Consequently there is the familiar refrain to limit growth, particularly in the developing world. Yet how do we reconcile this with the observation that ecological concerns are far greater in affluent societies where more basic needs have been met? And how can we more generally reconcile personal responsibility with collective consensus, local with global, or short-term remedies with visionary strategies? This exhibition sets out to pose such questions.

The artists presented in GREENWASHING adopt process-based and speculative approaches in their work which articulate energy and material transformations, fundamental ecological processes. Likewise, several works in the exhibition consider repositories of energy - whether waste, water, oil in ways that reveal previously obscured patterns, while similarly 'upcycling' meaning.

The diverse practices represented in the exhibition share a strategy in that they do not just passively lament the degradation of our planet, or only provide sound technical solutions. Instead they actively articulate the contradictions and responsibilities that we encounter personally and as a society. Art here does not necessarily proclaim a 'correct' ethical or green choice, but allows the possibility for broadening and analysing our perceptions and actions. It sets a critical attitude into motion that intervenes and infiltrates, re-interprets and decodes humans' relation to non-human life, as well as to each other."

GREENWASHING Project