Though the art market doesn't always embrace them, environmentally-conscious artists ignite important conversations.
At a September exhibition in Paris at a private home, artist Morgane Porcheron showed me a faded Converse shoe spilling with seashells, rubble, and seaweed. This small work of art pulled me into a scene of forgotten belongings sloshing in the waves. I asked Porcheron what inspired this piece, and she launched into how she came up with the idea while strolling down the beach in Normandy. She accidentally knocked over a wooden board, causing the debris resting on it to spill into her old shoes. This piece was a tribute, Porcheron said, to what is rejected by the sea.
“With our planet burning, the power of art to sound the alarm … is more crucial now than ever,” –Stefano Vendramin
“With our planet burning, the power of art to sound the alarm, to light up new paths, and to mobilize us towards them is more crucial now than ever,” Stefano Vendramin, one of the exhibition's organizers, wrote in a catalog for the exhibition. Vendramin is a curator of art related to environmental themes and founder of STRATA, an artist agency that supports artists like Porcheron whose work he sees as furthering conversations about climate change.
Porcheron and Vendramin are part of a growing movement in Paris to bring ecological themes to the forefront of the contemporary art scene. While art such as Porcheron’s fuels climate discourse, she and other contemporary artists whose work considers climate issues often cannot rely on traditional means of selling their work. “If you’re not making artwork that you can hang on a wall, there’s very little market for it,” Vendramin said. Still, as the world grapples with the reality of climate change, artists and curators in this global art hub are creating a space for artists to help shape the discussion.
The climate crisis feels distant for many people, both in time and location, said Liselotte Roosen, an online clinical psychologist at Positive Mind Works, based in Australia and New Zealand, and Psycholoog Op Afstand, based in the Netherlands. But art can reduce that psychological distance, according to a study of Roosen’s, by evoking emotion and displaying personal relevance.
Three characteristics are crucial, she said, for art to resonate: It’s memorable, participatory, and personally relevant.
Three characteristics are crucial, she said, for art to resonate: It’s memorable, participatory, and personally relevant.
“Installation art is really good because it’s easier to have that immersive feeling or get that participatory element,” Roosen said. Installation art is mixed-media work that often involves sensory and spatial experiences.
Carmen Bouyer, an ecological artist based in Paris, holds a participatory art installation about once a year. She held one such installation, “A quoi rêvent les forêts?,” in June 2022 in the Fontainebleau Forest outside of Paris, as part of the Nuits de Forêts festival. In the dappled light of the forest, large sheets of paper dangled from the trees. “What does the forest dream of?” Bouyer asked the group she had invited.
As participants answered, Bouyer scrawled their musings in inky calligraphy. Several hundred people gathered for the festival. Some shared stories and poems with her beforehand and others spoke their stories live.
To offer to the whole world / My trees, my pure air, / To take care of the living / And make it last, / This is my ultimate dream
–Babeth Aloy
“To offer to the whole world / My trees, my pure air, / To take care of the living / And make it last, / This is my ultimate dream,” Babeth Aloy, an artist who participated in the installation, wrote in her poem, “Rêves de forêt,” which she gave Bouyer for the event.
In the Converse sculpture and her other work, Porcheron contemplates how industrialized material confronts the natural world. She typically creates sculptures out of discarded construction site materials and plants. Another piece of hers, Tetris Végétal, consists of stacked cement blocks with plants growing through the crevices. “Tetris Végétal was born from a feeling of crampedness in big cities,” Porcheron said. “The plants are enclosed by these blocks. They seek the light and just want to unfold.”
Porcheron wants us to look down at the ground beneath us and consider our actions. “I would like viewers to become aware of their soil, its richness, its potential and possibilities,” Porcheron said. All human actions appear in the soil, including our waste and pollution, she said.
While Bouyer has received distinguished residencies and Porcheron has displayed her work in esteemed galleries including the Louvre, their work isn’t what most collectors seek.
“The challenge is to sustain a form of income and to keep doing the work in one place long term,” Bouyer said. Bouyer is not really in the art market, she explained, nor is she trying to enter it. She makes a living through accepting residencies, which pay her to do place-based work. She also organizes events for schools, galleries, and environmental organizations.
“Very few collectors are willing to buy artwork which they cannot envision in their living room,” Vendramin said. Another factor, according to Vendramin, is that these pieces are often not tradeable. Collectors might purchase art as an investment if they anticipate its value going up. But some forms of contemporary art, such as Porcheron’s installations using plants and soil, aren’t made to be kept for long periods of time and then sold to the next buyers. What’s more, Vendramin said, “They don't want artwork shouting at them about the environment.”
STRATA has launched a number of initiatives to support artwork that Vendramin sees as pivotal to society’s climate discourse but that may not appeal to collectors.
One of these projects was a two-week public art exhibition in June 2021, called Aparté #2, that Vendramin curated with Collectif Embrayage, the organization that founded the Aparté series. On the bustling streets of Paris’ Fifth Arrondissement, nine artists each displayed their work in the storefront of a different eco-responsible shop. One piece was a collage of receipts, a comment on our consumption habits. Another featured flowers floating in vases and fastened to fishing weights. The artist, Arthur Guespin, intended the flowers to appear suspended in space and time, as if plucked from the cycle of degradation that occurs with the commodification of living things.
The art featured in Aparté #2 is exactly the kind of work Vendramin said he wants to support and thinks will make an impact. “I just want to help these artists who are making this work that they maybe cannot sell in galleries,” he said. A crowdfunding campaign paid the Aparté #2 artists for their work.
Vendramin is also working with Art of Change 21, an organization founded by Alice Audouin, a curator and specialist in sustainability and art, that holds installations at the UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP) summits, to get the public involved in creating climate-related art.
One of the organization’s projects, called Maskbook, invites people at the climate summits to use waste materials or scavenged items to make masks.
“Maskbook raises awareness and mobilizes the public through creativity using the anti-pollution mask,” the Art of Change 21 website says. Over 7,000 people from more than 40 countries have participated so far.
“COP is very dry,” Vendramin said. “We hope that by inviting artists there we can change the discourse.” And they’re not just there to pressure government officials. They are out on the streets, galvanizing the public through participatory works.
Maskbook made an appearance at COP27 in Egypt in November 2022. “We had lots of people stop to look at the exhibition,” Vendramin said. “I think we stood out because of our artistic content, which is still fairly rare at COP.” After the exhibition, about a dozen participants from places such as Zimbabwe and the U.S. gave Vendramin their contact information and expressed interest in hosting a Maskbook workshop in their own countries.
A significant motivation for both Aparté #2 and Maskbook was bringing climate-related art to audiences that wouldn’t see it if it were in a gallery. Located in businesses on heavily trafficked streets, the Aparté #2 installations reached people who were not necessarily looking for climate-related art. Vendramin estimated that 5,000 people saw these works during the two weeks they were on display. “If we put this in a gallery we would have had a few hundred people at most,” he said.
Similarly, projects like Maskbook or Bouyer’s participatory installations, which she advertises to the public, break out of gallery confines, extending the conversation beyond a few elite art collectors.
“I think it’s really important that this type of art is free and that it’s in a public space,” Roosen said.
While climate-related art can get the public thinking about climate change in new ways, Roosen suggested that viewers need to translate thoughts into action. One solution, Roosen suggested, is holding discussions. “When people come out of the experience, I think it’s important to have a space where people can sit and talk,” she said.
Aparté #2, for example, featured workshops and guided tours for the general public to supplement the exhibitions. While Vendramin said that it is difficult to measure the impact on customers who passed through these shops, he said the business owners approached him after the installation and shared that the artwork made it easier for them to talk with customers about their own climate commitments.
Roosen also noted that solution-oriented work is more likely to move people to action, as opposed to art that expresses more pessimistic themes. Artists, of course, are not known for avoiding the melancholic. Pair installations with documentaries or discussions to explore solutions, Roosen suggested.
As Vendramin and the artists he works with make space for artistic expression of climate themes, climate-consciousness is gaining traction in the broader Parisian art scene as well. In 2022, the annual Art Paris became the first art fair in the world to conduct a complete carbon life-cycle assessment, and one of the fair’s two main themes was “Art & Environment.”
Palais de Tokyo, one of the most renowned galleries in Paris, is gearing up for ecologically and socially-focused programming, such as “Reclaim the Earth,” an exhibition that ran for five months in 2022.
STRATA is making some changes to further influence climate conversations, with plans to make the connection between eco-responsible companies and artists central to its business model.
“The responsibility of the art world in terms of raising awareness and producing tangible ways of action is huge,” Bouyer said. “Here in France, rational, more scientific discourse is very dominant … but telling the story through more personal, emotional, complex ways through the arts is absolutely essential.”
Bouyer hoped that her Fontainebleau exhibition would remind participants that together they could heal the human relationship with the earth. She said there were a couple of people who were brought to tears by the experience and embraced each other.
Aloy, who has done some of her own work in the Fontainebleau Forest, said she saw the exercise as a warning to respect nature and recognize how fragile it is. “I learned a lot by going to the forest and feeling the connection as an artist — what I could give to the forest and what she could give back to me,” Aloy said. “When you’re connected to nature, you’re connected to yourself.”
“Sometimes we can only tell truths through fantastic stories,” Bouyer said. And when it comes to the complex truths of the climate crisis, those stories might even be told through a debris-filled Converse sneaker.
An activist’s ecotourism program engages Gambian locals in protecting their environment — while boosting their livelihoods. Read the story.
Preserving genetic samples from a wide variety of alligators and crocs helps thwart their potential extinction. Read the story.
A garden in Burien, Washington, brings together a neighborhood and a school for at-risk students to address the community's needs. Read the story.
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The critically endangered Popa langur gets help from a group of local youths. Read the story.
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When turbine blades reach the end of their life, an Ohio company turns them into functional public art. Read the story.
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A non-orthodox biologist fights for the protection of ecosystems in Guatemala by inviting local communities to participate. Read the story.
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New Orleans nonprofit groups are getting creative to reduce trash and waste at the iconic Mardi Gras festival. Read the story.
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An Australian wildlife organization dedicates its efforts to preserving endangered Tasmanian devils. Recently, they’re celebrating an important milestone — the birth of the group’s 500th joey. Read the story.
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In Tanzania, a high school student creates nitrogen-rich fertilizer using discarded clippings from his school’s hair salon. Read the story.
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Abdou Touré carried his childhood lessons from Boy Scouts into a life dedicated to inspiring environmental action in Dakar, Senegal. Read the story.
Ben Moore’s The Ugly Co. takes the fruit nobody wants — and makes it delicious. Read the story.
Restoring a tree canopy in India’s Assam State has reunited families of Hoolock gibbons after a 132-year separation. Read the story.
At Toronto Metropolitan University's Free Store, cast-offs find new homes with students – and nothing costs a thing. Read the story.
New Orleans is well-known for its music and food. Gregory Swafford aims to make it just as famous for its cleanliness, and he and his community are leading the way. Read the story.
In Western India, a nonprofit hires locals to spin yarn from plastic waste. Read the story.
Thaely is turning India’s plastic waste into a sneaker that’s green from heel to toe. Read the story.
New York City’s Rockaway residents are focused on restoring native species along the shoreline to protect dunes and thwart erosion. Read the story.
Taiwan’s specialty coffee doesn’t (yet) have the stellar global reputation of the country’s award-winning baristas. But coffee growers focused on sustainability aim to change that. Read the story.
Under the guidance of one man, India’s women are restoring their villages and protecting their children’s futures, one river at a time. Read the story.
Sanitation and potable water are a challenge in Makoko, Lagos, one of the country’s largest slums. But two young women have invented a water filtration system that aims to change that. Read the story.
In Kenya, a collaboration between government and nonprofits has revitalized farmland and created new prosperity. Read the story.
In Africa, climate change is testing centuries of accumulated and evolved indigenous knowledge. The methods, so far, are holding up. Read the story.
In Bali, banana leaves and bamboo serve as truly natural compostable packaging. Read the story.
An Indigenous botanist educates children about the environment, combining traditional practices with contemporary science. Read the story.
An ecomural made from hundreds of thousands of discarded bottlecaps is the product of many hands and symbolizes change in Mixco, Guatemala. Read the story.
The city government of Asheville, North Carolina, is inviting the community to create important pollinator habitats. Read the story.
Remote villagers in India saved their forest from destruction — and forged an emotional bond to ensure its long-term survival. Read the story.
A volunteer group has attracted supporters and beautified Saratoga Springs streets. Read the story.
The invasive hyacinth — the scourge of Africa’s Lake Victoria — offers an affordable way to feed livestock and provide local employment. Read the story.
Law clinics are empowering rural communities through climate education and projects specific to local challenges. Read the story.
In Utah's Colorado Plateau, butterfly counts bring together scientists and volunteers to collect data and educate those who participate. Read the story.
On Cape Cod, the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy's Gills Club inspires the next generation of female shark and ocean advocates. Read the story.
The owners of San Francisco’s Shuggie’s Trash Pie restaurant fight food waste deliciously. Read the story.
When the seas became overfished by commercial fishermen, the government created the Lagos Seafood Festival — inviting seafood lovers to indulge and everyone to learn more about sustainable aquaculture. Read the story.
On the island of Lombok in Indonesia, scuba diving volunteers are on a mission to protect the coral reefs. Read the story.
While farmers in Zimbabwe typically rely on chemicals, an inventor is thinking of the bees. Read the story.
Izzo Mwangi was appalled to find plastic bottles in the Maasai Mara National Reserve — so he constructed a tourist camp using them. Read the story.
In India, cultivating millets can protect farmers from losing crops to climate catastrophes. Read the story.
Gardeners and seed savers like Shirley Bellows rise to the challenge of safeguarding heirloom seeds before they are extinct. Read the story.
These new firefighters wear wooly jackets year-round. Read the story.
Climate change and disease have decimated the Keys’ coral reefs. But a lab has pioneered a process to accelerate their regrowth … and prioritize climate-resilient corals. Read the story.
The new Community Supported Fishery (CSF) program on Martha's Vineyard provides direct-to-consumer access to the freshest seafood available.Read the story.
An Iowa farmer traces his path from dreamer to do-er on a farm where nothing goes to waste. Read the story.
Part of the Paris resilience strategy adopted in 2017, Les Cours Oasis (“Oasis Courtyards”) is a project that funds schoolyard renovations. Read the story.
The Lights Out Philly initiative is helping to protect birds from glass collisions during the fall and spring migration seasons. Read the story.
As climate changes impact their soils, the coffee and rice farmers of the Karen Hill tribe are learning to adapt. Read the story.
In the US alone, at least 18 species of firefly — there are an estimated 173 species in the US and Canada — now face extinction. Read the story.
In 2019, the Riverside Park Conservancy decided to try a new approach to its Woodland Restoration Initiative by bringing in goats to help tame invasives. Read the story.
Can Masdeu began as a leper colony, a place for those rejected by society. It became a community for those determined to change the world. Read the story.
When sea urchins moved in, the kelp forests died. The solution? Evict the sea urchins. Read the story.
Quiet Parks International (QPI) has certified Mt. Tabor Park as the first urban quiet park in the United States. Read the story.
As sustainability infiltrates professional sports, one event is taking the lead: the Ocean Race. Read the story.
In Kingston, data from the past five years suggests that the student bus pass program has led more young people to become regular transit users after they leave high school. Read the story.
A program in Burlington, Vermont trains volunteers to maintain wild spaces. Read the story.
A lake stewardship program enlists those who love their lake to participate in its protection. Read the story.
Citizen keepers have sprung into action to help rare marsh grasshoppers — by inviting them into their homes. Read the story.
Tom Brown has personally tracked down more than 1,000 forgotten varieties of apples. Read the story.
Scenes from a misty morning bird banding demonstration led by the Audubon Society’s Pomfret Center in northeastern Connecticut. Read the story.
Volunteers protect all that makes Mitlenatch Island special — the breeding birds, the unusual fauna, and the sea stars. Read the story.
Black soldier flies help reduce food waste and then become a key ingredient in Insekt, a new Canadian skincare line. Read the story.
An unorthodox but effective non-lethal strategy keeps coyotes at bay — even those hungry for the farm’s sheep. Read the story.
They look like ordinary gardens but can be a powerful tool in flood-prone regions by absorbing stormwater and recharging the groundwater system. Read the story.
Not long ago, catching a glimpse of a bald eagle was a rare thrill. While it’s still thrilling, we can celebrate that it’s increasingly common. Read the story.
A job training program gives unemployed or underemployed people the opportunity to tackle environmental issues. Read the story.
Can Cross-Fostering Save This Once-Technically-Extinct Species? Read the story.
Alligator hunter Miriam Boucher (don’t worry, she’s just studying them) is living her dream in the swamps of South Carolina. Read the story.
A three-word slogan — Keep Tahoe Blue — has become the rallying cry of the League to Save Lake Tahoe and offers a blueprint for others around the world. Read the story.
On Kauai, it takes a village to ensure the protection of a beloved seabird. Read the story.
On a whim, this suburban homeowner ripped out her lawn. After a year of watching the transformation and welcoming pollinators, her regret has given way to reverence. Read the story.
Ecuador’s Seymour Airport, constructed of recycled materials and running on solar and wind energy, offers not just a place for planes to land and take off but a home for birds, lizards, and plants. Read the story.
In conversation with Bluedot reporter Victoria Thomas, the filmmakers behind a stunning documentary discuss the species they honed in on, and defend the sometimes extreme conservationists fighting to protect them. Read story here.
A team of scientists in Busan, South Korea is discovering ways to turn wastewater (perhaps even our urine!) into fuel. Read story here.
This converted factory is home to a wealth of vintage and antique goods.“Sundays are show time,” says John Hiden, the owner of Mongers Market, a treasure trove for vintage and antique shopping in Bridgeport, CT. Hiden sounds determined and full of enthusiasm this morning, like the ringmaster of a circus — and Monger’s Market is not unlike a circus brimming with curious objects and characters. Read story here.
A unique collaboration between First Nations and various partners restores a stream for salmon.
Standing knee-deep in cold, clear water, resource management technician Mike Wald is counting spawning sockeye salmon in a stream officially known as Cheewaht S-2 (Stream 2). One of three streams that feed remote Cheewaht Lake in Vancouver Island’s Pacific Rim National Park Reserve, S-2 is home to an ancient salmon run used by a genetically unique sockeye that since time immemorial has been both vital and sacred to the local Ditidaht people. Read the story.
Los Angeles, CAI pick up a struggling bee with no hesitation, knowing full well that it can sting me, but likely won’t. If it’s living out its last days, it’ll be happier on my flowering basil. The basil, which grows alongside the peppers, lettuce, and other members of my little garden family growing outside the door of my Los Angeles apartment, feeds me — not just when I want a salad, but also when I can no longer take this life of rushing, panicking, and worrying about an unsure future. Read the story.
A protected old growth forest protects us all. Read the story.
Even before the Mashpi lodge was constructed, staff biologists were creating a conservation strategy — and discovering unheard-of species. Read the story.
The co-founder of a Portuguese upcycling company creates fashion from broken umbrellas. Read story here.
It was 2004, and Nikki Buxton and her partner had just begun work on the home they planned to build near a citrus orchard in a lush rainforest in Belize. A boy walked up carrying a big white bucket. Read the story.
Make Food Not Waste Executive Director Danielle Tod enlisted an international certification program to push Michigan toward its carbon neutral goals — one restaurant at a time. Read the story.
When a new polluter came to Sharon Lavigne’s already industry-heavy community of color, she rallied her neighbors, fought back, and won. Read the story.
At a September exhibition in Paris at a private home, artist Morgane Porcheron showed me a faded Converse shoe spilling with seashells, rubble, and seaweed. This small work of art pulled me into a scene of forgotten belongings sloshing in the waves. I asked Porcheron what inspired this piece, and she launched into how she came up with the idea while strolling down the beach in Normandy. She accidentally knocked over a wooden board, causing the debris resting on it to spill into her old shoes. This piece was a tribute, Porcheron said, to what is rejected by the sea. Read the story.
Behind a house in sunny San Diego sits a 70 square-foot shed. If passersby were to take notice, they’d likely assume it stores the usual things that go into a shed: tools, lawn equipment, cardboard boxes filled with items that are simultaneously unimportant and irreplaceable. No one would suspect that those four little walls contain a solar-powered coffee roastery for keeping local residents happily caffeinated. Read the story.
Newtown Creek’s dirty history and restoration inspires art. Read the story.
A couple opens their Arizona-based net-zero home to guest speakers, vegan potluck, and conversation to help others discover the abundance of a plant-based diet. Read the story.
Food waste thrown out with general waste has plummeted to less than three percent. How did South Korea become a world leader in managing food waste? Donghyuk Jang, a resident of Goyang city in South Korea’s capital area, takes a bag of food waste twice every week to the apartment block garbage bin. This is no ordinary trash can, however. When Jang scans his residential card, the lid opens. He dumps the bag’s contents into the bin, and pushes the ‘close’ button. A friendly voice says, “You have thrown out 2,350 grams. 148 won [11 US cents] has been deducted.” Read the story.
Most of us don’t consider disposable menstrual products, such as pads and tampons, when we think about plastic pollution. But in Europe alone, an estimated 590,000 tons of menstrual waste is generated annually. And a culture of shame around menstruation is, in part, responsible for the dramatic increase in disposable, plastic-based menstrual products. Plastic tampon applicators were introduced because early 20th-century doctors and society were squeamish about girls and women having to come into contact with their menstrual blood during insertion. Read the story.
Despite seeing it everywhere and using it on a daily basis, most of us give little thought to signage. These details on the landscape of our lives — the signs that glow above storefronts, or guide us to our train platform, or let us know we’re at the door of Conference Room II — have such ubiquitous influence that we notice them as markers of a destination rather than standalone objects. Read the story.
Downtown Pittsburgh, often called the Golden Triangle, borders the confluence of three major rivers: the Ohio River from the west, the Allegheny River from the northeast, and the Monongahela River from the southeast. Read the story.
“What he’s doing there is called wallowing,” says Craig Thoms, one arm slung over the steering wheel of his truck as we watch a bison roll around on the ground, hooves flailing, dust rising in small clouds. Read the story.
It’s 5 a.m. and the sun is rising over thousands of sea turtles on the beach at Playa Ostional in Costa Rica. Read the story.
When we heard about Playa Viva’s turtle sanctuary and learned that we could participate in the collection and transfer of turtle eggs, we hardly believed that anything could safely emerge from those waves. Read the story.
Costume-reared chicks are key to establishing a self-sufficient non-migratory flock of the endangered species. Read the story.
An agrovoltaic test facility in Longmont, Colorado gives a family farm a prized microclimate and the financing to grow. Read the story.
The Repair Café and Thing Library deliver the tools a local community needs to fix our throwaway culture. Read the story.
The Ridges Sanctuary began as one botanist’s initiative to protect orchids. Nearly a century later, the land trust remains one of the most biologically diverse ecosystems in the entire Midwest. Read the story.
A group of righteous neighbors in a New York suburb is on a mission to protect a historic forest. Read the story.
Millions of pounds of textiles from across Southwestern Ontario are being recycled in innovative ways. Read the story.
Raíz de Fondo in Baja California Sur’s capital city of La Paz is planting gardens, one mind at a time. Read the story.
New edible spray gives Canadian cucumber producers the chance to ditch plastic wrap. Read the story.
These weaponized 3D-printed fake tortoises spray out noxious methyl anthranilate when pecked. Read the story.
Two Canadians help bring Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities together. Read the story.
The collection in Forks, Washington, showcases forty years of beachcombing finds, from beautiful glass floats to parts of a jet engine. Read the Story.
Can recreation replace the state's traditionally coal-powered economy? Read the story.
The South Portland, Maine retailer is part of the ‘refill revolution’ around the country. Read the story.
A former oil drilling site, Banning Ranch is nearing transformation into a nature preserve. Read the story.
Kemp’s ridley sea turtles return to the ocean after being cold-stranded and undergoing specialized rehabilitation. Read the story.
As the Western United States and other arid climates around the world face increased wildfire activity, many civilians are forced to flee. Wildland firefighters run toward the flames. Read the story.
A new facility in Santa Barbara hopes to divert over 85% of the county’s organic waste. Is there still a place for community composting programs? Read the story.
How university students re-imagined parking spaces in the heart of downtown Toronto. Read the story.
What you didn’t know about ladybugs, butterflies, bees and hummingbirds, and how you can be a good global citizen by planting for them. Read the story.
The iconic park celebrates its 150th birthday this year with plans to protect it for another 150 years. Read the story.
An ambitious (and replicable) program in Vermont turns surplus food into delicious meals for the hungry, ensuring that nothing goes to waste. Read the story.
Once considered unswimmable, the Willamette has found new life as a popular swimming and kayaking destination. Read the story.
