November 2020 Virtual Art Walk at Make.Shift gallery:
“Double Sided Leash”
Anna Baldi & Chris Copeland
This group of works asks whether we can or should make a distinction between nature and culture. To us, the answer is no, but to stop there misses the point entirely. What we call nature directly shapes our cultures and our cultures shape “the nature” around them, for better or worse. Our technological advancements show us parts of the world never before seen. And by these very creations the world is changed.
When we do work on our computers, we are participating in nature. Through one way or another, our computers are connected to large data storage buildings in Utah or Belgium, and these buildings interact with their surroundings, through heat, through their volume in space, the humans that work there.
The ultrasound technician and the nature photographer reveal our bodies and landscapes in ways that our eyes are not capable of. As we witness the mysteries of life being solved around us our world expands and contracts.
We are always transforming the landscape around us, it’s just a question of scale. Some technologies collapse distance, allowing us to change far away places. Some create boundaries that isolate individuals, othering members of our same species and erasing our collective experiences. But as a disease spreads around the earth, our imagined boundaries between states, between bodies, have become increasingly uncertain. Distant places are infinitely connected – through air, water, and all the creatures that move between them. Similarly, our bodies are connected even when we don’t seem to touch.
A leash, an umbilical cord, a wire, a railroad, a conveyor belt, a line of ants marching towards a giant food source. These are all cables that connect us, that threaten us, and that tie the forces of nature and culture together.
Anna Baldi Artist Statement:
I am a painter and sculptor interested in anthropology, animal studies, and gender studies. Through my art practice I attempt to dismantle the supposed divide between nature and culture, and investigate whether the word ‘natural’ still holds any value when our relationship to non-human life has become so obscured by human dominance. By creating a binary between nature and culture we also set up hierarchies. We have categorized, organized, and assigned value to every form of life, including ourselves. Humans are animals, and we are reliant on the earth like every other species. When we try to separate ourselves, and deny our dependence on nature, we leave no space for wildness, and no space for lives, relationships, and actions that do not fit neatly into either category.
In my work I blur this boundary, and create situations where symbols of nature and culture collide. These collisions expose our animal reality, and the hypocrisy of our binary systems. Frequently, I use images or physical pieces of animals in my work and place them in what we might consider to be a distinctly human scenario, often this scenario depicts violence or distress. This switch of human and non-human highlights our shared experience as animals while also referencing the many ways humanity has been stripped from those who do not fit within a narrow definition of culture.
I don’t believe that a person’s mind can be opened or changed through a single interaction. When I think about how my own opinions were formed, it was through many small learning moments over time, or moments that made me pause and realize that there was something I didn’t understand. I would like my work to operate in a similar way. My objects and imagery are intentionally confusing and often disturbing, but the objective is to plant a seed in the viewer’s mind, and to create an image that will be remembered. My work proposes an acceptance of our animal reality, and an end to our futile, and often destructive attempts at control.
Anna-Baldi.com
Chris Copeland Artist Statement:
I am an artist currently living in Seattle, WA. With kinetic sculpture, living systems, and drawing, my artworks mediate conflicts I observe between organisms and technological progress. Many ecologies, systems, and forms of labor fascinate me, which is why my work might place you in an office, on a bicycle, or on a farm. By connecting these different systems, I show that nothing happens in isolation. I work with many different collaborators to make these artworks possible. These collaborators include bakers, biologists, bacteria, and more. I received my BFA from the Carnegie Mellon School of Art in 2018, and I have been an Artist in Residence at the Coalesce Center for Biological Art.
Chris-Copeland.com
