New exhibition features artworks exploring climate change

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Global climate change is the inspiration behind a new exhibit at BronxArtSpace.

The exhibit, titled “Nature, Climate, Art,” opened on July 13 and runs through Aug. 6. For this project, the South Bronx organization teamed with the Global Crisis Information Network, an environmental non-profit, to feature six artists who explored various effects of climate change in the United States and abroad.

Inka Juslin, one of the event organizers, said the exhibit allows different artists with experience in different media to contribute to environmental conversation. 

“So many people can address the climate change issue,” she said. “And when you work with art, we want to give that space for artists to explore, rather than say ‘you can only speak one way about climate change.’”

Tarja Silverman, another event organizer and the vice president of the Global Crisis Information Network, said her organization decided to team up with BronxArtSpace because it was attracted by the goal of using art to raise climate-change awareness. After that, the work that went into “Nature, Climate, Art” was no different from the efforts that go into a typical art exhibit. 

“Seeing the artists, they put their heart and soul into these works,” she said. “It’s fantastic.”

Linda Cunningham, a co-founder of BronxArtSpace, is one of the artists featured in the exhibition. Her work hits closer to home than other pieces, because she combined different artistic elements to produce a picture of the Bronx waterfront, located between East 132nd Street and 149th Street. 

The 132nd Street pier had been damaged by a Con Edison explosion in 1989, and then by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. The waterfront received $2 million from the New York Restoration Project and the New York City Council on July 8 for redevelopment.

As someone who’s lived in the South Bronx for 16 years, Ms. Cunningham was inspired to create her art after seeing more of the damage Hurricane Sandy caused. 

“It’s been important to me for as long as I can remember,” she said. “I thought about it for a long time.” 

When it comes to how the community will perceive “Nature, Climate, Art,” Ms. Juslin said that she hopes everyone learns something from it and that people from other boroughs travel to the South Bronx to see the exhibit. 

“[Climate change] is not just something happening in New York City,” she said. “It’s everyone’s problem. This question touches all of us.”

 

BronxArtSpace, Global Crisis Information Network, Tiffani Moustakas

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