Ursula Biemann

For Biemann, art can probe the limits between ways of thinking, feeling and knowing. Her video essays are visual reflections that emphasize the importance of narration and the way we tell stories about the world. The artist introduces actants and intermediaries into her narratives, such as the field scientist or the explorer, to emphasize the meaning of different political landscapes and contemporary habitats: they function as conduits that bring us in contact with the many ecosystems with which we coexist.  For instance, the science fictional video Acoustic Ocean (2018) explores the sonic ecology of marine life on the Lofoten Islands in arctic Norway with a marine biologist engaging in interspecies communication by means of scientific instruments.

Ursula Biemann’s new projects included in this exhibition are centered on the politics of knowledge. One prominent example is the initiative Devenir Universidad (2019-2023), which involves the co-creation of an Indigenous university led by the Inga community of southern Colombia, together with academics, historians, activists, botanists and educators. It is a biocultural education project that emphasizes the interdependence between nature and culture. The other is Forest Mind (2021). Engaging with the intelligence of nature, this recent art work expands the limits of the epistemological and brings Western science and ancestral knowledge into a meaningful conversation.

The exhibition Becoming Earth explores the possibilities of transformation through a poetics of images, sounds and words that heighten our awareness of the interconnections with the natural world and affirm the need to hold multispecies dialogues to enhance our role in maintaining healthy ecosystems. Biemann’s sensitive and theoretical proposal immerses us in an experience in which images and testimonies powerfully interpellate the world we inhabit.


Artist: Ursula Biemann (Zurich, Switzerland, 1955)
Curator: Virginia Roy Luzarraga