Florida International University campus, located on the site of an abandoned airfield, is appropriately the first to fly NestGen’s inaugural exhibition adeptly identifying the increasingly urgent ecological implications of our modern world. Through the creative process, 30 artists have come together with a sculptural vision identifying topics critical to each person.
This remarkable project gathers the works of Leonor Anthony, Belén Moreno, Carlos Marcello Conti, Katiuska González, Paola Puppio Zingg, Astolfo Funes, Giovanni Ciucci, Bartus Bartolomes, George Goodridge, Roxanna Gottschalk, Miguel Rodez, Othón Castañeda, Rebeca Gilling, Rudolf Kohns, Sandra García-Pardo, Aimee Pérez, Alessandro Camaduro, Allison Kotzig, Maura Lucchese, Emilio Héctor Rodríguez, Nila Onda, Patricia Thrane, Domingo De Lucía, Rubén Santurian, Tomasa de las Casas, Ismael Gómez-Peralta, Iván Castillo, the artists’ duo Sylvia Heisel and Scott Taylor, and César Rey.
NestGen is a fledgling initiative beginning public life under the wing of FIU’s Honors College. Principal NestGen curators include Bartus Bartolomes and Leonor Anthony accompanied by curatorial associates Katiuska González, Paola Puppio Zingg and Astolfo Funes, though all insist NestGen works as a complete, interdependent team.
This project was hatched in China several years ago. Bartolomes, a mixed-media artist and writer, remembers, “I was showing my latest research on Arctic landscapes at the Beijing International Art Fair and I was lucky that Leonor Anthony was showing next to me. We became friends and, as she is an (FIU) Honors College artist in residence, I presented to her a preliminary proposal.”
Later in Miami they began talks with Katiuska, Paola and Astolfo regarding their thoughts on producing an ecologically timely exhibition, aiming to make it happen in concert with the many other skilled artists on the docket. Bartolomes stressed the problems of the remaining world forests threatened by wood exploitation, mining industries and pollution placing global ecosystems’ survival in jeopardy.
The moniker, NestGen, springs from “nest”, a word associated with life, new beginnings, hope. “Nests are created piece by piece. It can be a little twig in a big picture,” says Katiuska González, a mixed-media artist who has additional expertise in the art world as a gallerist. “All of us have something valuable to bring to the project, and we have the same goal about what we want to achieve; concern about the ecological state of our planet and our contribution, that we can mae a difference. All the artists have a different perspective. I took the problem of toucans being extinguished in Brazil because of deforestation. Different points of views brought a synergistic harmony to the project,” continues Katiuska. “We want to bring an awareness and consciousness on how it will affect us. We underestimate the power of experience … change one person’s perspective and it brings in the community.”
Curator Leonor Anthony, a Cuban-born expressionist painter, FIU Honors College artist in residence and curator of the Honors collection, was instrumental in approaching FIU initially. “We had a project on Earth Day on April 22nd titled Floatable Cubes, now this project is about nests. It is a teaching moment. We plan to take this NestGen project from here to other universities in the U.S. and to certain museums in Europe that are interested in ecology. The NestGen exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue. We want the message to go worldwide, to bring the exhibition to a wider audience. We’re already talking with a castle in Italy, to exhibit concurrently with the Venice Biennale,” she adds. “Every single thing (in the exhibit) is so well thought out. I am thoroughly inspired and blown away by the thoughtfulness and commitment. Participating artists care about their work and the planet. That care translates and communicates. We inspired one another. We are doing this in an university setting … touch one person and it reverberates like a ripple.”
Leonor Anthony’s piece Athena’s Birth was fueled when she spied a toilet by the roadside, which transitioned into a statement on out overuse of objects. Plastic bottles now erupt from the black painted commode “in mourning for what we’re doing,” Anthony shares. “I planted flowers in the tanks. We dump on the earth–it’s death in reverse and urges us to reuse. Earth is willing to re-create herself in a constant state of grace and purity. Due to her manner of birth, Athena has dominion over all things of the intellect.”
It’s easy to understand how this exhibition came to fruition people connected to the project are, each and every one, capable, convivial and creative souls, the execution of their tasks well thought out in myriad ways. Like spokes on a wheel, the artists put shoulders to that symbolic wheel, birthing widely varied and effective pieces to elicit deeper consideration and conversation about our everyday routine and its impact on those that come after.
NestGen curators each chose five artists to participate. Bartus Bartolomes expounded on the criteria: “We were open to different trends and aesthetical ways; looking for vital topics of the planet: metaphorical survival and the embryonic life process carried out using any diffusible technique with recycled objects.”
His own piece, Last Nest is a way for the artist to incur a “dialogue with the art object and the Mother Nature nest to capture the fragmentation of the image in the decomposition of the world. It symbolizes the contamination of the oil industry on our planet. The bird is metaphorically trying to save the egg.”
Photographer Paola Puppio Zingg’s work The Excitement of the First Banana is concerned with the “questions of the role of women in society, nature and their relation with the male. This piece reflects the beginning of our creation, the primitive instinct of our existence in this world–the importance of sex, love and birth,” she says.
Mixed media artist Domingo De Lucía presents Passport, which brings awareness on ‘migration’ as the force that historically has fueled the evolution of the species. In contemporary times, migration constitutes one od the most sensitive global issues. He comments, “Even though the evolution of nature and the progress of humanity are directly associated with mobility, now individuals must have documents to prove who they are and where they come from.” Trying to stop human mobility is like trying to stop evolution.
Astolfo Funes says of the inspiration for his sculpture Global Warming: “What will we do to slow global warming? While we struggle to figure it all out, the face of earth as we know it–coasts, forests, farms and snowcapped mountains–hangs in the balance of our metaphorical hopes.”
Roxanna Gottschalk’s work, Leben, represents women in the miracle of life fashioned from chicken wire, the womb as nest with ping pong balls, tire and bead.
Miami-based artist Emilio Héctor Rodríguez’s work queries, “Let’s just imagine that there is no light, no water, no trees no flowers, no birds.”
The NestGen scluptural Exhibition is present in front of the Frost Museum of Art at FIU. “In a natural environment, people can interact with nature and bring its message,” Katiuska González says in summation.
By Irene Sperber (*)
[themify_quote]
Nest/Gen was unveiled on November 15 at Florida International University’s Modesto A. Maidique Campus, 11200 SW 8th St., Miami, 33139. It will be on view until December 8 2014.
[/themify_quote]
Irene Sperber is a photographer and writer based in Miami. She has exhibited her artwork internationally. Her articles, essays and photographs have been published in Miami Art Zine, The Examiner, South Florida, Casa y Estilo and Art in America.
