Between Belief and Reality: Revealing Water Crises in Textile & Sculpture
Wednesday, March 17, 2021 at 10am EST via Zoom, free with registration. RSVP here
How do artists transform scientific observation to reveal the realities of water crises in the face of denial, dismissal, and inaction?
In their sculptural artworks on the impacts of water insecurities, both Vibha Galhotra (India) and Tali Weinberg (USA) reach beyond documentation to create artworks that layer emotion, cultural heritage, and activism. From revealing the Yamuna River’s tangible toxicity using ghungroo bells in Vibha Galhotra’s Flow sculptures to reinscribing scientific data on drought, illness, and temperature changes in Tali Weinberg’s Woven Climate Datascapes, these artists employ beauty, shape, and color to prompt viewers to examine the gaps between their perceptions of water crises and their entangled realities. In this conversation, the two artists discuss their investigative creative processes and share artworks that subvert viewers’ expectations and transform visible realities into emotional understanding.
Lingering: reflections, questions, and scores for continued engagement
in collaboration with Ayaka Fujii
“I trace relationships between climate change, water, extractive industry, illness, and displacement; between personal and communal loss; and between corporeal and ecological bodies.” – Tali Weinberg
How do you trace the relationships between corporeal and ecological bodies?
Ask someone close to you / Have a conversation around:
“Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?” (from Vibha’s works)
Where do belief and reality intertwine in issues of climate crises?
What scales of time do you feel and archive?
What kind of data does your body hold?
What do you labor over/in? Where does your labor live in relation to your ecological and cultural lineages? Do you find labor in ritual, or ritual in labor?
What is sacred to you? Where is sacred to you?
Your/my/our body is sacred.
Your/my/our body is polluted.
Your/my/our body is ebbing.
Your/my/our body is flowing.
Your/my/our body is cyclical.
Your/my/our body is porous.
Your/my/our body is water and its edges.
Additional Resources
See Vibha’s newest work in the Asia Society Triennial “We Do Not Dream Alone” March 26 through June 27
Vibha Galhotra: ‘I am a traveller, an observer of situations’
Read about Vibha’s work in the “Utopia of Difference” Catalogue: Jack Shainman Gallery
Watch a recording of an event from Vibha’s project “Who Owns the Water” at the Asia Society
Read more from Tali in an interview with Artists & Climate Change
Stay tuned for news of Tali’s works in the upcoming group exhibition The Data Imaginary: Fears and Fantasies at the Griffith University Art Museum, Australia (July 1 – September 18, 2021) and solo exhibition Weathering at the Praxis Gallery, Cleveland, OH (September 3 – October 29, 2021).
Check out Yale University’s Climate Opinion Maps
Watch Water Warriors: “the story of a community’s successful resistance against the oil and gas industry” in New Brunswick, Canada.
Stay Up-to-Date with the Artists’ Upcoming Works and Events
http://vibhagalhotra.site/index.html
https://www.instagram.com/vibhagalhotra/
https://www.instagram.com/tali.weinberg/
About the Artists
Born in 1978 in North of India, Vibha Galhotra (New Delhi, India) is a Delhi-based multi-disciplinary artist whose visual, performative, and participatory art projects address rapid industrialization and suggest possibilities for reimagining societal and cultural structures. She is trained as a printmaker, earning her BFA in Graphics from the Government College of Arts, Chandigarh, India (1999) and her MFA in Graphics at Kala Bhavan, Visva Bharati, Santiniketan, India (2001). While she has been engaged in land-based and environmental art for decades, her engagement with the Yamuna river began with an invitation from Khoj (International Artists’ Association) to participate in an initiative to clean up the river. Her large-scale sculptures address the shifting topography of the world under the impact of globalization. Galhotra sees herself as being part of the restructuring of culture, society and geography, both of New Delhi, where she lives, and of the world at large. She uses her work to redefine her own existence in contemporary society, both philosophically and structurally. Offering an alternative to the conventional approach to studying the environment, Galhotra seeks to expand the discourse to include topics pertaining to tradition, history, economics and political intervention. Galhotra’s recent solo exhibitions include: “Beyond the Blue” at Jack Shainman Gallery, New York (2020); “Climacteric” at Punjab Lalit Kala Akademi, Chandigarh, India (2019); “Insanity in the Age of Reason” in New Delhi (2017); and “Absur –City –Pity –Dity” at Jack Shainman Gallery, New York (2015). She has Participated in many national and international group shows, including “Water Line” at the Metropolitan State University of Denver, “The Darkened Mirror: Global Perspectives On Water” at San Jose Museum of Art, “Unfiltered: An Exhibition About Water” at the William Benton Museum of Art (Connecticut, USA), and “Kailash Cartographies” at the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center (Parsons School of Design/The New School, New York), among others.At present, Galhotra is a fellow of the Jerusalem International Fellowship program 2020-21. She was awarded the Asia Arts Future Award in 2019. Galhotra was the 2017 Asian Cultural Council Fellow in the United States, earned a Rockefeller Grant (2016), and received a Young Women Achievers Award given by Young FICCI Ladies Organisation (YFLO) (2015).
Tali Weinberg (USA) draws on a history of weaving as a subversive language for women and marginalized groups to create a feminist, material archive in response to the worsening climate crisis. Through sculpture, drawing, and textiles, she traces relationships among climate change, water, extractive industry, illness, and displacement; between personal and communal loss; and between corporeal and ecological bodies. Weinberg’s work is held in public and private collections and is exhibited internationally.
Recent exhibitions include the University of Colorado Art Museum, 21C Museum, Berkeley Art Museum, 108 Contemporary, and the Center for Craft. Her work has been written about in the New York Times, Surface Design Journal, the Tulsa Voice and literary Journal Ecotone. Select honors include: Tulsa Artist Fellowship, Serenbe Fellowship, SciArt Bridge, Windgate Fellowship to Vermont Studio Center, Lia Cook Jacquard Residency, and Sculpture Space, among others. Weinberg has taught at California College of the Arts, University of Tulsa, Penland School of Craft, and lectures and gives workshops throughout the US. She is currently a 2021 virtual artist-in-residence at the Museum of Art and Design.