PRESENTATION: I Feel the Earth Whisper

In a world rapidly changing under the weight of climate change, the exhibition “I Feel the Earth Whisper” invites us to contemplate the fragile beauty of the natural world and our profound interconnectedness with it—through installations by Bianca Bondi, Julian Charrière, Sam Falls, and Ernesto Neto. Encompassing sculpture, painting, video, and photography in evocative scenarios, the exhibition invites us to perceive ourselves as part of nature, its forests, and the unique ecosystems of our planet, encouraging us to reclaim our historically rooted role as respectful guardians of these vibrant habitats and to tell new, caring stories about our relationship with the Earth—true “planetary” love stories.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Museum Frieder Burda Archive

By weaving together threads of mythology, cosmology, and ecology, our shared heritage and future, the exhibition “I Feel the Earth Whisper” contemplates how the modern Western world, by commodifying nature, has progressively alienated itself from the Earth and its wisdom, reducing it to an abstract, subordinate entity driven by human desires. The show eschews a nostalgic or idealistic return to the ethos of the nature movements of the 1960s, advocating instead a profound reengagement with the forgotten languages of nature. Unraveling the persistent myth of a dichotomy between the natural world and human civilization, this exhibition confronts the naive assumption that humanity can control nature. Rather than engaging in a relationship of domination, the exhibition advocates healing and a renewed humility before the grandeur of creation, encouraging us to cultivate a sentient, embodied, and reciprocal relationship with the natural worlds that recognizes our interdependence and the inherent value of all life forms. Highlighting our roles as active agents of change, each artist’s installation urges us to embrace our relationship with the natural world with radical intimacy and to remember: our bodies are not separate from the soil, our veins flow with the same water as the rivers, and our lungs are one with the trees. Bianca Bondi’s site-specific installation “Salt Kisses My Lichens Away” evokes mystical sagas from the Black Forest and the history of the Baden region. By blurring the borders between the outside and inside, the installation within Richard Meier’s architecture seems like a wild, breathing house in which tapestries and wallpaper coexist with moss, water, and plant life. These immersive environments challenge viewers’ perceptions and evoke a sense of the unseen or spiritual world. Bondi’s dynamic installations evolve over time through chemical processes, highlighting themes of transformation and the passage of time, and serve as poignant reminders of our ecosystem’s fragile beauty and the necessity for a symbiotic relationship with our environment. In his exhibition “Where Clouds Become Smoke”, Julian Charrière presents a series of works that delve into the intricate entanglement of humanity and nature by exploring the enduring impact of human activities and invites visitors to reflect on their own role within our Earth’s ecosystem Charrière’s new project, Calls for Action, combines participatory art with land conservation. Through a live video connection between the Black Forest in Baden-Baden and a Coastal Forest in Ecuador, visitors can experience themselves as part of the interconnectedness of our planet and contribute to conservation efforts initiated by the Museum Frieder Burda and the artist’s generous donation, ensuring the long-term preservation of the Ecuadorian ecosystem. Sam Falls’s exhibition “Waldeinsamkeit” brings together works made of therapeutic gemstones, ceramic works, cast glass, and various canvases. Conceived specifically for the Museum Frieder Burda, the artist created a site-specific work in the surrounding Black Forest, working with the forces of nature and the characteristic flora of Baden-Baden. Here, Falls captured natural processes of growth, decay, and regeneration by laying out a large canvas in the forest and placing found objects like flowers and branches on them, which over time left ghostly imprints as pigments reacted with elements like sun, rain, and time. In his exhibition “The Birth of Contemporous Blue Tree”, Ernesto Neto evokes a space of harmony and healing with a monumental tree structure made of hand-crocheted Brazilian cotton fabrics, specifically conceived for the architectural setting of the Museum Frieder Burda. The tree, symbolizing the union between earth and sky, is adorned with plants, aromatic herbs, spices, and musical instruments. Enveloped by a 13-meter-high fabric “rain”, the installation serves as both a sanctuary and a playground, inviting visitors to engage through touch, smell, and sound or lie down, sing, dance, meditate, and breathe in the energy and beauty of feeling vibrantly alive.

Participating Artists: Bianca Bondi, Julian Charrière, Sam Falls, and Ernesto Neto

Photo: Bianca Bondi, Scrying in Astral Ponds, 2023. Photo: Maru Serrano

Info: Curators: Patricia Kamp and Jérôme Sans, Museum Frieder Burda, Lichtentaler Allee 8 b, Baden-Baden, Germany, Duration: 15/6-3/11/2024, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 10:00-18:00, www.museum-frieder-burda.de/