Rotas Brasileiras: SP-Arte

In Rotas Brasileiras 2023, Albuquerque Contemporânea brings a selection of works by artists who reflect on the theme of the Anthropocene.
We also present the solo exhibition Inebriare by artist Mateus Moreira.

The Anthropocene is our time, a period marked by the planetary effects of anthropic processes. The human species acted in such a way on the planet, that it caused changes of geological magnitude. We are leaving the Holocene – the period in which we have lived for the last twelve thousand years, since the last ice age – to enter a new climate regime, which no one really knows what it will be like.
If, on the one hand, the Anthropocene contains many ends, by opening our eyes to see which paths our way of life has taken us, on the other, it has the capacity to destabilize some of the most deeply rooted certainties in what we call civilization. Ideas such as growth and progress, pillars of modernity, are called into question.
More than that, the notion of Anthropocene makes us see a striking counterpoint to the perspective of separation between natural history and human history. This new age of the Earth pushes us to abandon the distinction between nature and culture and embrace the world as an integrated system where beings are in constant cooperation. A dense set of relationships, articulating the different ecosystems, work in close connection to keep the planet alive.
Next to each existing one is a tangle of connections and an infinity of sensations. The entire universe thinks and feels itself, and every being matters in the web of its perceptions. Understanding the world as a place where humans and non-humans are in permanent collaboration and contact, we can think better about its preservation, continuity and regeneration.
The artists' works gathered here help us both to think about this moment in which life on the planet itself is threatened by ongoing mutations, and to activate the feeling of how fragile the arrangements that allow the Earth to be habitable are and how they need to be care.

Text - João Castilho