Fondazione MAST
Via Speranza, 42
40133 Bologna
May 16th - September 22nd, 2019
The multidisciplinary Anthropocene exhibition makes its European debut at Fondazione MAST, Manifattura di Arti, Sperimentazione e Tecnologia. This investigation of human influence on the state, dynamic and future of the Earth is conveyed through the extraordinary photographs of Edward Burtynsky, films by Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier, and augmented reality installations.
The Anthropocene Project is a four-year collaboration between the world-renowned photographer Edward Burtynsky and multiple award-winning filmmakers Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier. Combining art, film, augmented reality and scientific research, the exhibition documents the ways in which humankind has changed the Earth, bearing witness to the effects of the human footprint on natural processes.
The project is a multimedia exploration that documents the indelible human footprint on the Earth from concrete seawalls in China that now cover 60% of the mainland coast, to the biggest terrestrial machines ever built in Germany, to psychedelic potash mines in Russia’s Ural Mountains, to the devastated Great Barrier Reef in Australia, and surreal lithium evaporation ponds in the Atacama desert, from the marble quarries in Carrara to one of the world’s largest landfill sites in Dandora, Kenya.
The exhibition is organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Canadian Photography Institute of the National Gallery of Canada — where it debuted simultaneously in September 2018 — in partnership with Fondazione MAST.
It is co-curated by Urs Stahel, curator of the PhotoGallery of the Fondazione MAST, Sophie Hackett, photography curator of the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, and Andrea Kunard, curator of the Canadian Photography Institute of the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa.