Barbican Art Gallery presents RE/SISTERS: A Lens on Gender and Ecology, a major group exhibition surveying the relationship between gender and ecology to identify the systemic links between the oppression of women and the degradation of the planet.
This expansive exhibition brings together photography, film, and installations by nearly 50 international women and gender non-conforming artists whose work is united across decades, continents, and media by an urgent engagement with, and protest against, the ongoing ecological crisis. Platforming work by artists from the Global Majority and Indigenous peoples, RE/SISTERS explores the indivisible bond between environmental and social justice, offering a vision of an equitable society wherein people and planet alike are venerated and treated fairly.
With women and marginalised communities often placed at the forefront of advocating and caring for the planet, RE/SISTERS offers a depiction of nature that explicitly resists the mechanical, patriarchal order that is organised around the exploitation of natural resources and the oppression of “othered” bodies. Across roughly 250 works, the exhibition presents a roadmap for creative forms of civil disobedience and protest: a lesser explored, cautiously optimistic route to reconsidering our relationship to the Earth and our problematic co-existence with it. Tackling unequal power structures which oppress and threaten both marginalised communities and our precious planet, RE/SISTERS advocates for empowerment in the face of destruction, reflecting a radical and intersectional brand of eco-feminism that is diverse, inclusive, and decolonial.
RE/SISTERS explores environmental and gender justice as indivisible parts of a global struggle. It seeks to address existing power structures that threaten our increasingly precarious ecosystem.
RE/SISTERS: A Lens on Gender and Ecology - Thu 5 Oct 2023—Sun 14 Jan 2024
Further Information: RE/SISTERS: A Lens on Gender and Ecology | Barbican