Vital Forms: New Ecological Aesthetics

This exhibition brings together six emerging and established contemporary artists whose work addresses humanity’s changing relationships to nature in the 21st century. In an era of ongoing environmental devastation and climate change, these artists propose new ways of representing and experiencing the living forms that constitute the earth’s diverse ecological systems– ranging from microbes to flowers to geological formations. The artists represented in the exhibition include: Anicka Yi, Precious Okoyomon, Sky Hopinka, Alchemyverse (Bicheng Liang and Yixuan Shao), and Stanley Brouwn. Artistic and philosophical depictions of nature in the Western world have often tended to confirm the human viewer’s sense of separation from and superiority over the natural world. Using a variety of techniques and media, these artists instead challenge inherited assumptions of human supremacy over other organisms.

The artist duo Alchemyverse, in residence at Sarah Lawrence College during the fall 2025 semester, creates installations that evoke deep cycles of geological time far surpassing the narrow span of human history. In his photograph and text series Unforgiven Souls Sing Hymns (2024), Sky Hopinka depicts North American landscapes as repositories of Indigenous resilience and resistance. Anicka Yi’s hybrid sculpture Two Nervous Systems In A Room (2022) undermines distinctions between plant and animal, inspired by the ability of orchid flowers to imitate and attract insects. Both Precious Okoyomon and Stanley Brouwn contribute text-based works to the exhibition. Okoyomon’s recent poems, several of which are included as a booklet in the exhibition, are inspired by queer life and the vitality of nature. Brouwn’s conceptual work on paper, entitled Art & Project Bulletin #11 (1969), prompts viewers to reflect on the vast but unseen worlds of microbial life that surround us.

This exhibition is funded with a grant from the Mellon Foundation.