The Art Pledge
Portrait of Mark Dion

Mark Dion

Born in
1961
From
New Bedford, United States of America
Lives and works
New York City, United States of America
Represented by
In Situ - fabienne leclerc
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Dion

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There are a lot of different ways artists can engage in environmental issues like climate change. Art is certainly not a panacea, is not going to solve these problems, but has an important part in building a more general progressive culture of nature, and a more progressive culture that responds to changing our general attitudes towards the natural world.

Biography

Mark Dion’s installations and drawings question science’s objectivity and reimagine worlds where all knowledge is put on an equal footing. Often compared to curiosity cabinets, his work urges the viewer to acknowledge the environmental crisis and ponder about the future of mankind. His piece “A Meter of Jungle” was created in connection to the first “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, which paved the way for contemporary artists to focus on themes related to climate justice.


Land Art can be identified as a precursor in art history to artists’ interest in climate issues. After its emergence creators started to understand the impact of industrialization in natural environments and to integrate such themes to their work. Artists like Robert Smithson denounced human exploitation in works like Spiral Jetty, an installation erected in one of the most polluted places in Utah: the Great Salt Lake. 


We can draw parallels between his work and Ernst Haeckel's, a German scientist and artist, author of Art Forms in Nature (1904), as they both envisioned science and art as two complementary disciplines. 

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