October 28 - December 9, 2022
The collaborative work of Calista Lyon and Carmen Winant examines the profound psychological impact of ecological breakdown, with a particular focus on the interconnectedness of the water crises and the body. Both artists share an interest in the ways in which feminist and posthumanist perspectives have the potential to intervene within patriarchal and capitalist norms to radically shift the personal and political. Working from a research-based approach, Winant draws heavily on 1960s and ’70s ecofeminist traditions and the lesbian feminist separatist movement to build alternative image archives that center women, collectivism, and care. Lyon, on the other hand, reflects on ecology, environmental precarity, and the historical and present-day human exploitation of land in installations and performances combining found images, obsolescent technology, and reclaimed materials.
For their installation at Ruffin Gallery, the artists mobilize water as a catalyst for thinking about transformation and societal paradigm shifts. Juxtaposing images of “water breaking” in the context of both childbirth and river restoration projects, the installation features videos played in rapid succession on a circular constellation of outdated CRT monitors resting on a custom table fashioned from recycled timber. Culling hours of footage from YouTube, television, and Hollywood cinema, Lyon and Winant assembled a living archive. Perhaps alluding to a shift in climate activism beyond pacifism or nonviolence, the clips feature dramatic footage of explosions and gushing water in the immediate aftermath of human-involved initiatives to liberate rivers and waterways from extractive dam infrastructure. This imagery is punctuated by kitsch, sometimes humorous portrayals of unsuspecting women in the process of labor when the amniotic sac ruptures and liquid pools on the floor. Altogether the installation presents a dizzying array of experiences, where, in the artists’ words, “water never really ‘breaks’ but rather shifts form, moving in and out of bodies, [and] acts as both a signal and an agent of embodied change.”
Drawing in part from Andrea Ballestero’s text A Future History of Water and Astrida Neimanis’s Hydrofeminism: Or, On Becoming a Body of Water Lyon and Winant seek to capture the moment of fundamental transformation that occurs when individuals are compelled to act in support of water’s protection and larger efforts combating climate change. A soundtrack features the artists in conversation, responding to the prompts that guided their process in developing the work, including: When have we experienced perspectival “breaking through”? How do we relate to water in and of our own bodies? What are the most frightening or sublime encounters we have had with water? What can we learn from water? How do we move past the myth of our own powerlessness? The narration seems to echo internal dialogues we might all have had in coming to terms with the overwhelming feelings of suspension and urgency that are associated with climate grief. By using the transition between life in the womb and life outside of it, and the liberation of waterways as metaphors for thinking about the kind of paradigm shift that is needed for individuals to become politically and socially mobilized, Lyon and Winant engage in a radical reorientation of values and ethics—and prompt us to imagine a reality where we, like water, embody new modes of survival and resistance that are ever fluid, adaptable, and empowered.
-Amara Antilla, Senior Curator at Contemporary Arts Center
Ruffin Distinguished Artist in Residence Program
