Human/Nature at MCASD

Over the long weekend, I took a mini-road trip to sunny San Diego, home of the world famous Zoo, Sea World and…an art museum? Yup, not only do they have an abundance of beaches and imported wildlife, they host plenty of art exhibitions as well.

With two locations Downtown and another in La Jolla, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD) is currently hosting four traveling exhibitions. The most notably inspiring of the four for me was Human/Nature: Artists Respond to a Changing Planet, which is organized by the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA), MCASD, in partnership with the international conservation organization Rare. 

The concept is rooted in the questions, “Can art inspire conservation?” and “Can conservation inspire art?” Eight artists were sent to eight UNESCO-designated World Heritage sites around the world for two mini-residencies, where they developed projects, often with the collaboration of the local communities and artisans. From Dario Robleto’s sculpture of feathers formed from the stretched tape of sound recordings from extinct birds, to Rigo 23′s arrangement of traditional wood carvings into weapons of mass destruction, the dynamic from one artist to the next is fascinating and inspiring. Sitting and feeling bad about the destruction of our planet is one thing, but this project takes it another step by making tangible the human reactions to these changes.

The exhibition runs through February 22. For more information, click here.