Seeing the Anthropocene
Seeing the Anthropocene (2023)
Presented simultaneously across Tiger Strikes Asteroid and Cherry Street Pier in Philadelphia, this exhibition features diverse artists and collaborative groups contending with the global climate crisis and other urgent environmental issues. Through wide-ranging media, the included works foster understanding of the moment we're in, inspire personal connections with the natural world, and imagine different potential futures depending on how we act today.
Austen Camille (with music by ENAensemble) | Lydia Cheshewalla | Matthew Colaizzo | Christopher McNulty | Ana Mosquera | Hui-Ying Tsai | Hui-Ying Tsai in collaboration with Jonathan Grover | Byron Wolfe | The Immersion Project: Austen Camille, Erik Cordes, Ph.D., Samantha Joye, Ph.D., Malte Leander, Christine Lee, and Rebecca Rutstein
All photos and videos by Constance Mensh, unless otherwise noted.
Tiger Strikes Asteroid location
installation view
installation view
Mother by Hui-Ying Tsai and Jonathan Grover (shell sculpture), Stain by Christopher McNulty (grid), and Consistency by Christopher McNulty (framed works).
Stain was created with automotive exhaust; the artist fitted a new piece of paper against his car’s tailpipe each day that he drove, fora year.
Eroded Aggregate Piles at Gypsum Ranch Gravel and Concrete-Gypsum, Colorado by Matthew Colaizzo
detail, A Vanished Volcano Visualization Kit by Byron Wolfe. This interactive installation offers models, photographs, and illustrations to help visitors envision Mount Tehama, an ancient volcano in Northern California that's almost entirely disappeared over the past 400,000 years due to natural erosion. The kit is part of a larger creative research project titled Vanished: A Chronicle of Loss and Discovery Across Half a Million Years, including collaborators Sheri Simons (sculptor), Heather Altfeld (writer), Oliver Hutton (designer and photographer), Troy Jollimore (philosopher and poet), and Dr. Rachel Teasdale (volcanologist).
detail, Window by Matthew Colaizzo
Window by Matthew Colaizzo (left) and The Immersion Project: Prototype by Austen Camille, Erik Cordes, Ph.D., Samantha Joye, Ph.D., Malte Leander, Christine Lee, and Rebecca Rutstein
This is the first prototype of the Immersion Project, a multi-sensory installation developed by a team of artists and oceanographers to educate public audiences about deep-sea ecosystems. The project incorporates large-scale, coral-inspired sculptures, hand-drawn augmented reality (AR) animation, and spatial sound. After a national exhibition tour, the sculptures will be installed in the Gulf of Mexico to help restore coral habitats damaged by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. (Click “Watch on Youtube”, above, to access the full description of this project.)
Breathing Exchange Temporium (B.E.T.) by Ana Mosquera. Mosquera is a member of the Venezuelan diaspora who’s lived and worked in Latin America, Europe, and the U.S.; her work consistently reflects her first-hand experience with life’s precarity and volatility. B.E.T. is a woefully dysfunctional product imagined for a disastrous climate future: one can either use it as a life raft or suck its stored oxygen, causing the raft to deflate. The piece incorporates hand-printed textiles that reference Venezuela’s collapsed economy. Learn more about the project here.
installation view
installation view
Cherry Street Pier location
Cherry Street Pier is a historic municipal pier repurposed as a mixed-use public space, hosting multiple exhibits and projects at any given time. For Seeing the Anthropocene, three site-specific installations are peppered throughout the venue, all clearly marked with cohesive blue and white signage.
Here, twice a day, we are held by the ocean. By Austen Camille, with music by Evan Kassof. This augmented reality (AR) animation allows visitors to watch an intimate story unfold over the Delaware River, right on their own phones, incorporating real-time sights and sounds like passing boats and trains. After the exhibition, an expanded version of this piece was permanently installed at the Quay at Penn’s Landing Marina, courtesy of the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation. Learn more about the project here.
View of the far end of the pier, with a group of visitors approaching Camille’s Here, twice a day, we are held by the ocean.
Community River Almanac by Lydia Cheshewalla. A member of Osage Nation, Cheshewalla expresses Indigenous concepts of interconnectedness through her work, challenging Western anthropocentric ways of thinking. For this site-specific, interactive piece, the artist invites visitors of Cherry Street Pier to record their observations and reflections on the Delaware River and its surrounding ecology, using provided materials and prompts.
One of several signs installed throughout the pier as part of Lydia Cheshewalla’s Community River Almanac. The other signs prompt visitors to “Look up” and “Pause here to offer gratitude towards water and the way all life centers around it.”
detail, Community River Almanac by Lydia Cheshewalla
Double Carps by Hui-Ying Tsai, viewed from the ground floor. This installation expresses Tsai's connection to her two deceased, Taiwanese grandmothers and to the natural world. The soft sculptures reference Tsai's childhood pillow, which her maternal grandmom stuffed with dried tea leaves. (These sculptures are stuffed with autumn leaves from the Philadelphia area, but the fish carry hand-made amulets filled with the fragrant tea.) The carp imagery references the split air-dried fish that Tsai grew up eating at her paternal grandmother’s home on the fishing island of Penghu, and the entire piece echoes an ancient Chinese poem, influential to Tsai, that recounts a woman receiving a letter inside a carved, wooden carp.
detail, Double Carps by Hui-Ying Tsai
Double Carps by Hui-Ying Tsai, viewed from the second floor