On the occasion of the first chapter of the Kin(d) Relations exhibition presented in 2022 at Transpalette, EMAP member Antre Peaux explored an outdated dichotomy between Western notions of nature and culture. Two concepts that can no longer justify a hierarchy of living beings (dominated by humans) or a way of viewing nature as merely a resource available for human use. This new chapter of Kin(d) Relations offers an exploration of diverse artists’ thoughts on the (un)inhabitability of the earth.
Kin(d) Relations. The title of the exhibition combines the notion of kin (relations) developed by Donna Haraway and Édouard Glissant’s concept of Relation. The “d” in parentheses evokes other ideas: kind, in English, meaning both “kind” and “species.” Kin(d) Relations is thus conceived as a poly-ecosystem where human and more-than-human bodies mutually affect each other. Through the experience of the artworks, the exhibition highlights the ways we all affect one another—our interdependencies, the rhizomes and symbioses of our visible and invisible existences. Kin(d) Relations presents a culture of attentiveness, where humans are neither thought of as central nor at the top of a system. Instead, they act within their habitats just like all other species and entities. It is not about cohabitation, but rather the coexistence of an earthly community animated by multiple realities.
The artworks of Kin(d) Relations create situations of entanglement, porous encounters (between artworks as well as between visitors), symbiotic alliances, and real and speculative kinships. From bacteria to the earth’s crust, including seeds, pheromones, waters, cells, sounds, hormones, and light sources, all living beings are considered as part of an empathic, desiring, more-than-human community, approached from an ecofeminist, intersectional perspective: queer, feminist, ecological, and decolonial. A collective and joyful way of thinking that pushes the boundaries that constrain our imaginations. In this way, the relationship between new technologies and sciences becomes fertile ground for infinite, multiple worlds. The constant intertwining of the organic and the technological joyfully generates surprising openings within the human reality, bringing forth new realities in which we are allowed to experience the invisible and infinite dimensions of what Glissant calls totality, the immense community of living beings with which we must learn to reconnect.
The exhibition runs from 26 October - 29 December 2024 at the venue Transpalette at Antre Peaux in Bourges.
