In the Whairepo Lagoon, a projection on the Mana Moana water screen shows Marshallese poet Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner performing her narratives of environmental crisis. It is Matariki in Pōneke, and on some nights the screen dissolves into the air as Tāwhirimātea makes his presence felt. At Te Papa, past and present exist together amidst stunning eel traps in Hīnaki: Contemplation of a Form and a careful, considered exhibition, Hiahia Whenua, subtitled Landscape and Desire. At City Gallery Wellington, Nova Paul’s Ngā Pūrākau Nō Ngā Rākau (Stories from Trees) (2022) grounds us in a world peopled by tuna and pōhutukawa, while upstairs, in Stella Brennan’s The Pacific Century (2018), a hypnotherapist entreats us to time travel, searching for the nuclear fire that marks the beginning of the Anthropocene. Across the motu, curators are engaging with the environment: At Thresholds at City Gallery, curated by Moya Lawson; The sentiment of flowers at Gus Fisher Gallery, curated by Lisa Beauchamp; Te Au: Liquid Constituencies at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, with its collective curatorium of Zara Stanhope, Simon Gennard, Ruth McDougall, Beatriz Bustos Oyanedel, Huhana Smith and Megan Tamati-Quennell. Is it just me, or is a new kind of nature everywhere? 

Like the petrichor of damp soil, we can sense the ecological pulse beating through galleries in Aotearoa. In many ways the shift is expected. Artists are engaging with the concerns of the world, and although we could try to define this as an ecological turn, there remains a question of what kind of language it requires.

The art is accompanied by a lahar of words: it began with vital materiality, then entanglement, trouble, kin, intra-actions, and now we find ourselves amidst the Chthulucene uprising! Sometimes, instead of concentrating on the works, I find myself puzzling over the writing that accompanies them. I begin to wonder where these texts have come from, and how they got here, to be passed around with such passion. 

There was a similar transformation of ideas in the 1990s. After translations of French intellectual theory found their way into the literary studies and art history departments of American universities, the differences between Roland Barthes, Hélène Cixous, Michel Foucault, Luce Irigaray, Jacques Derrida, Julia Kristeva and Gilles Deleuze vanished, and a new field, French theory, was born. French theory induced a new kind of slumber, where words were endlessly deconstructed until new formations appeared. Absolutes were out, artworks dematerialised, objects had agency and humans were no longer at the centre of things. French theory worked because it helped us to both understand American imperialism and to articulate the sneaking sense that there was another way to do things. We were giddy with our participation in the global intellectual culture wars befitting the end of a century, and we never really questioned how it fitted here.

Today, as then, artists, curators and writers are picking texts to craft our approach. We reassemble the words as they arrive. “Unpacking,” as we used to say. To describe the possibilities of the ecological turn, we make use of words from quantum mechanics: entanglement and intra-actions; geology: Anthropocene; anthropology: shimmer; biology and neurology: the chattering of trees amidst the mysteries of the mycelium network. We think about how speculative thought can take us from the Plantationocene to the Capitalocene. We reduce, reuse, recycle and borrow. 

In an opinion piece in ArtReview this June, Marv Recinto argues that “artists and institutions seem content to merely ‘address,’ ‘engage with’ or ‘respond to’ the climate crisis.” Recinto continues: “It’s time for a concerted shift towards action.” In a similar vein, e-flux Journal has committed to a series of texts focusing on the “various ‘ecological turns’ in contemporary art of recent years.” Their approach is to question what ‘nature’ means. The scare quotes give everything away. If this is an ecological turn in art, we must refresh the language rather than repeat it. 

Emerita Baik understands this. Baik’s series of textile quilts ‘The softest place on earth’ (2021) presents small units of survival where the artworks breathe together in tension with mythical beings known as Dokkaebi. Often emerging from dark, humid, eerie corners when the weather is foggy and wet, Dokkaebi are spirits formed from old, inanimate and discarded household objects, who use their powers to interact with humans. Animated across Baik’s quilted surfaces are magical clubs belonging to Dokkaebi, their spikes reminiscent of the short legs and claws of tardigrades—microscopic animals that can survive extreme temperatures and live without water for decades by entering a ‘tun’ state, neither alive nor dead. Baik’s Dokkaebi offer one way to tend the people–planet relationship. We pause, alert to our relationships to each other, and the energies of the objects we encounter.

Contemporary art establishes how we think about nature and how we situate ourselves within it. We also need to think about how different geo-cultural perspectives require different emphasis. Artists do not have an obligation to address everything about a crisis that is, and always was, much more than human. To ask whether art can fix the climate is the wrong question. Humans make up just 0.01 percent of all planetary organisms. There are more than 8.7 million other species out there. And, yes, we need every strategy we can find to account for this planet we share, but we also need to think carefully about what art is for, how it is made and for whom.

Many current practices are provoking responses that open up an ecological language that might spur us to action. What we need most of all now is close attention paid to the artworks themselves. This is the work of curators—not just interpreting the artworks or layering them with texts. It is time to address common existences, living conversations, and ecological justice. Look at Toiora: Ki te Pō ki te Ao at Pātaka, in which customary practices are passed between hands, and collaborations occur between people and earth materials. There are threads here that connect back to earlier exhibitions, like Karanga Karanga at City Gallery Wellington in 1986. Back before the Anthropocene was on the tip of our tongues. It is not a new turn at all. We are just seeing it with fresh eyes.