Conversations | From Supercontinents to Florida: Artists on Climate Change

Art Basel Miami Beach 2023, December 8

From hurricanes to subtropical swampland, Florida’s unique ecosystem – and the way artists have represented it – is the focus of this panel. The participants tackle topics such as cohabitation and notions of deep time, considering the impact of human life and technology on this fragile ecology and the challenges posed by climate change.

Noémie Goudal, artist, Paris
Anne Duk Hee Jordan, professor & artist, Berlin
Lee Pivnik, artist, Miami
Moderator: Stefanie Hessler, Director, Swiss Institute, New York City

Noémie Goudal’s practice involves the construction of ambitious staged, illusionistic installations within the landscape, documented using film, photography. Goudal’s interventions are underpinned by rigorous research examining the intersection of ecology and anthropology, interrogating the limitations of theoretical conceptions of the natural world.

Transience and transformation are the central themes in the work of Anne Duk Hee Jordan. Through movement and performance, Jordan gives materiality another dimension – she builds motorized sculptures and creates edible landscapes. Her sculptures are intended to draw the viewer into the present and open a dialogue between natural phenomena, philosophy, and art. She asks questions about an ‘agency’ and encourages a change of perspective. She shifts the focus away from humans towards the entire ecology.

Lee Pivnik is an artist living in Miami, Florida. Working across disciplines, he takes inspiration from living systems and other species to imagine a future based on mutualistic relationships instead of extractive economies. His sculptures, drawings, and installations create a visual language for ecological entanglement, referencing fungal networks, epiphytic plants, and emergent animal architectures that inhabit South Florida.

Stefanie Hessler is a curator, writer, editor, and institutional leader. Her work focuses on ecologies and technology from intersectional feminist and queer perspectives. In May 2022, she was appointed director of the Swiss Institute in New York. Prior to that, she was the director of Kunsthall Trondheim (2019-2022), where she curated critically acclaimed solo exhibitions by Frida Orupabo, Diana Policarpo, and Jenna Sutela, and where she initiated various international collaborations, for instance with Princeton University, the Gwangju Biennale, and The Seed Box.

The Art Basel Miami Beach 2023 Conversations program was curated by Emily Butler.