Curator Alona Pardo’s art exhibition at London’s Barbican gallery celebrates the diversity, progression, and vitality of eco-feminist art. Eco-feminism is the idea that the degradation and subjugation, as well as resilience, of both women and the environment are interlinked. The exhibition addressed a variety of ecofeminist themes including protest, ecological care, environmental racism, queerness, and the politics of extraction. Pardo explains that there are many art shows which highlight climate change and its impacts, but what is rare about this one is that they “barely use those words. This is really a show that is shining a light on the nefarious activities that go hand-in-hand with gender-based violence and nature-based violence.” The exhibition hosts 250 works of art made by nearly 50 women and gender non-conforming artists from across the world. It spans many locations and mediums, including film, photography, performance art, and installation. Featured works included highlighting the generations of women affected by water poisoning in Flint, Michigan, USA and the Chipko Himalayan women who used tree hugging as resistance. Women often use their bodies in the protest and protection of natural sites, which links to the physicality of gender oppression and the physical impacts of climate pollution and degradation. Maggie Murray, a leader of the women-led anti-nuclear movement explains that they blocked roads to stop the nuclear weapons being delivered: “It was all sorts of bodies – young, elderly, different classes, races, and cultures.” Pardo’s exhibition and the showcased artists highlight that “if we liberate the land, then we liberate women.”
