Artists Benefit SOIL In Fight Against Climate Change
When it comes to climate change, we all can do our part to reduce our impact on global warming – from increasing our use of public transportation to reducing the amount of red meat we consume, we can each do something to contribute to a solution.
This year, a group of fourteen artists decided to make a more unusual contribution: using their works of contemporary art to mobilize climate change action on a larger scale.
Credit for both photos: Human Energy, Eiffel Tower, Paris © Yann Toma/Ouest-Lumière 2015 – scenography © ARTEL and Artists4Climate 2015 – Photo Shun Kambe
For the first part of the project, the artists displayed huge works of art around Paris while the city hosted the Climate Change Conference (COP 21). Since governments from around the world were working on a new climate change agreement, the artists each sought to convey the importance of taking this opportunity to commit to significant action. Exhibits included Drowning World by Gideon Mendel, which featured billboard-sized photographs of victims of flooding from around the world, to Human Energy (pictured above and at right) by Yann Toma. As Toma explained on the Artists 4 Climate website, the installation “transform[ed] the Eiffel Tower into an immense energy antenna… Using virtual energy generated by the actions of hundreds of millions people worldwide, it [was] a powerful artistic statement that we can unite to deal with the climate crisis.”
While the first part of the project sought to influence governments to make commitments for the future, the second part aimed to support projects already taking action. The artists auctioned off several of their works to benefit fourteen different projects (including SOIL!) fighting climate change around the globe. These organizations were chosen in collaboration with the United Nations Commission on Climate and Desertification (UNCCD) and included a wide variety of projects – a group as diverse as the artists supporting it!
We are honored to be a part of such a unique and creative way to fight climate change, and we’re so grateful to the Artists for Climate group and the UNCCD for their support for SOIL’s work in this arena!
Note: as of the writing of this blog, a few additional works are for sale and can still benefit SOIL! Contact us for more information.
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