Nature is able to survive the most terrible catastrophes — fires, floods, radiation, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis. Nature always manages to stay alive, it sprouts mosses and lichens, ascends from seeds hidden in the depths of the soil and continues to exist.
This is an exhibition about how to be alive in times when everything around us is ablaze.
Humankind is isolated from nature, does not feel a part of it, and in this separation it no longer remembers how to live through death, pain and change of contexts. We are cut off from the daylight — we can live and work during the day and at night, we are cut off from the cycles of nature: apples and pineapples are on our tables all year round, we are detached from the seasons under air conditioners set at eternal +23°C, and our Facebook pages are immortal and filled with happiness forever. But the knowledge that we, people, are a part of an ecosystem bigger than ourselves, is vanishing. Intuitively comprehending oneself as a part of nature, percepting the connection with the world of bacteria, fungi, animals and plants is lifesaving both for society and for the psyche of an individual human being.
During two plein-airs Belarusian artists have looked at nature not only as a landscape, but as a subject that has knowledge of surviving a catastrophe — both local and global, external and internal. Can we recall being a part of nature? Can we recollect how to survive the destruction, having our roots cut off from our land, and how to continue to exist where there seems to be no life?
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