Suchergebnisse

"This thesis questions how the human-nature relationship is negotiated by institutions and artists. To examine the crossover between art and the environment, I will be looking specifically at the artist's role in environmentalism. In particular, this essay focuses on contemporary art interventions located in the ocean or other bodies of water to evaluate a two-fold dynamic: artistic representation and social responsibility. Since the Land Art movement of the 1960s, artists have contended with the possibilities and limitations of visualizing environmental issues as a form of art making and social practice. Today, the emerging phenomenon of underwater art museums poses new questions concerning the future of art-as-environmentalism. The Museo Subacuático de Arte (MUSA) in Cancun, the first and largest underwater museum park, will be the primary case study to examine the underwater museum's multiple identities as a contemporary art museum, tourist attraction, and marine life conservation project. After MUSA was founded in 2009, a growing number of underwater art museums have been established around the world. This thesis will analyze the various understandings of Underwater Art, and challenge its crossover with the work's hosting institutions, their ecological economics, and the notion of sustainability. Second, I will examine a contemporary underwater art project, Yili's Puzzle located in Bali, Indonesia, by artist Yili Peng to investigate Underwater Art's political interactivity. Next, this thesis will look at Guoqiang Cai's The Ninth Wave exhibition in the Power Station of Art in Shanghai to analyze environmentalist interventions within an institutional framework. I will conclude the research with art practice, Inaction as Action by Josh Fairbank to propose a broader spectrum of environmentalist art intervention. I argue that Underwater Art has successfully expanded the scope of contemporary art. While Underwater Art's intention to preserve natural resources is potentially virtuous, it accesses environmental concerns only within the realm of fine art, thus colonizing the land for an exclusive, elite group. In short, Underwater Art suggests that anthropocentric approaches to environmentalism and environmental control are essentially futile endeavors to solve problems shared amongst the living things on our planet."

Preface -- 'Brief biographies -- Introduction : lost in Beijing -- Seeking Buddha -- Leaving home -- Wasteland -- Love -- Seeking the way -- Running away -- Homecoming -- Epilogue : return to Lhasa -- Appendix : interview time and locations -- 'Postscript