What happens when the landscapes we know begin to disappear — and how do we remember them once they’re gone?
Those questions are at the heart of 'No Other Place to Go,' a new exhibition at InLiquid.
On view through Oct. 17, the exhibition brings together five artists who use photography as a way to document environmental change, confront ecological losses, and encourage conversations about the changing climate.
Based in South Kensington, InLiquid is a nonprofit arts organization committed to connecting artists and audiences across the Philadelphia region, and works to create opportunities to use art as a catalyst for civic engagement and calls to social change.
“Climate change is an urgent and overwhelming issue, and art has an important role in helping people understand what is at stake,” says Rachel Zimmerman, Founding Artistic and Executive Director of InLiquid. “Data can show us the scale of the problem, but art helps us see it and connect with it in a more personal way. 'No Other Place to Go' shows how artists can take something that feels enormous and make it real, human and impossible to ignore.”
The featured artists include:
Anita Allyn’s new series 'Nature, Assembled', which brings together photography, living specimens, geological materials, and museum displays to explore how nature is collected, classified, and represented.
Richard Boutwell’s ongoing series 'Reclamation: Deadpool' focuses on the nation’s largest reservoir, Lake Mead, and uses the bathtub ring, the 160-to-180-foot-tall white mineral deposit left by the declining lake elevation, as a symbol for the inescapable reality of the accelerating impacts of climate change. The artist connects past historical policy decisions to present-day consequences to show evidence of a water system under stress.
Laura P. Krasnow’s 'And Then There Were None' series uses the material decay of photography to reflect the accelerating loss of the world’s forests. Images are captured on expired Polaroid film to create visual metaphors for climate change and the ongoing destruction of forest ecosystems. Through a medium that visibly deteriorates over time, Krasnow emphasizes the urgency of preservation, as well as the permanence of ecological loss.
Kaitlin Pomerantz uses maps, archival photographs, watermarks, and text to examine Philadelphia’s buried creeks (more than 300 miles of waterways that have been reduced by over 80% since colonial settlement). As heavy rains continue to overwhelm the city’s hardscape and sewer systems, the words of Toni Morrison are used to ask: What will it look like for water to, “remember”? What will be forgotten in its wake?
Emma Ressel uses the concept of Shifting Baseline Syndrome to examine how climate changes are normalized over time. Her work portrays climate change not just in the land, but also in human memory, perception, and expectation by staging photographic constructions — inspired by museum dioramas — that incorporate taxidermied animals and fabricated flora.
“I was initially drawn to each artist through the visual language of their work," says Katie Tackman, guest curator for the exhibit. "But as I spent time learning about their individual processes, research, and relationships to the land, I began to see deeper connections between them. Their practices are rooted not only in an observation of the natural world, but also in the emotions that arise from living alongside environments that are constantly changing.
"Their photographs express awe, love, wonder, anxiety, and grief over the possibility that places we know and cherish may disappear or become unrecognizable.”
With 'No Other Place to Go,' the work featured is used as both evidence and expression. Each artist examines what is changing, as well as how climate change can affect memory, perception and our relationship to the natural world through images that are informed by scientific data, historical records, disappearing landscapes and shifting ecosystems.
Curated in conjunction with the 20/20 Photo Festival, whose theme is 'Transforming Landscapes,' the exhibition reflects on the ways environments change over time.
'No Other Place to Go' will be on view at InLiquid, 1400 North American Street, through Oct. 17. For more information, visit inliquid.org.
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