A Burning World

On 11 August 2021, the highest temperature ever recorded in Europe occurred in Siracusa, Italy: 48.8°C. The record was just a foretaste of what would happen the following summer: severe heatwaves in Europe, India, Pakistan, China, the United States, and the entire northern hemisphere. Extreme and persistent warming caused not only thousands of deaths but also droughts and forest fires with serious consequences. However, such events were also indicators of broader, structural ecological disasters.

The climate fluctuates between the two extremes of fire and water, as can be seen in the exhibition’s juxtaposition of works by Mona Hatoum and Pier Paolo Calzolari. Droughts, downpours, overheating, melting glaciers, snowstorms: everything seems extreme, contradictory and out of proportion. The climate, we often say, has gone mad. Glaciers melt into waters that flood coastlines, submerge islands and cause mass migration. Water can be as indispensable as it is catastrophic.

The increasing number and severity of floods are tellingly portrayed by Gideon Mendel in photographs he has taken around the world. Midway between documentary and fiction, their impact is enhanced through his aesthetic approach.

The two issues are closely interconnected: ecological problems that compromise the health and even the very existence of the Earth are linked with the mindless use of power by corporations and governments, giving rise to criminal recklessness of global proportions.

The intolerable level of exploitation of the planet's resources, pollution, and other growing ills are associated with the abuse of vulnerable human groups. This is driven by individualism, the logic of profit, the squandering of resources, consumerism, and other dystopian social behaviours, without concern for their dire consequences and sustained by economic and social inequality.