“Everybody Talks About the Weather” is a research exhibition exploring the semantics of “weather” in visual art, taking atmospheric conditions as a point of departure to highlight the urgency of climate change.
The project is conceived by curator Dieter Roelstraete for the historic palazzo of Ca’ Corner della Regina, Fondazione Prada’s Venetian venue. More than fifty works by contemporary artists and a complementary selection of historical artworks trace the various ways in which climate and weather have shaped our histories and how humanity has dealt with our everyday exposure to meteorological events. The exhibition design created by New York-based studio 2×4 entwines the artistic dimension of the project with a series of in-depth scientific spotlights developed in collaboration with The New Institute Centre For Environmental Humanities (NICHE) at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice.
Weather and climate are usually the focus of two distinct scientific disciplines: meteorology and climatology. On the contrary, this exhibition establishes an empirical equation between these two objects of study employing the dual lens of visual art and science. It aims to frame the climate crisis and its impact on our daily lives by evoking, depicting, and analysing weather phenomena. Indeed, weather, and therefore climate, is a unifying and truly global theme: it links the actions and destinies of all the women and men who inhabit the world in every latitude and longitude. Talking about the weather is ultimately talking and caring about the future of all humanity.
Following the exhibitions “Human Brains: It Begins with an Idea”, Venice, and “Cere anatomiche: La Specola di Firenze | David Cronenberg”, Milan, this project represents another attempt to address broader cultural challenges with the conjoined tools of science and artistic creation: from the evolution of the study of human thought and the changing meanings of bodies in our societies to the current climate crisis. Through these activities, Fondazione Prada intends to disseminate new knowledge and share the latest results of academic and scientific research with a larger audience.
“Everybody Talks About the Weather” develops on two levels of Ca’ Corner della Regina, intertwining the two dimensions of research, the artistic and the scientific. On the ground floor, a large LED wall loops weather forecasts from a plurality of traditional and online media worldwide. In the first-floor rooms, historical artworks space with recent or new works, establishing an ideal continuity between past, present and future or triggering a short circuit between opposing visions and discordant notions. The exhibition reveals artists’ long-standing interest in “talking about the weather”, from allegorical and en plein air paintings to recent multimedia installations and transnational activism.
A series of “research stations” features more than five-hundred books, scientific publications and articles, and video materials and interviews with scholars and activists. They allow the audience to freely consult the various bibliographic sources of the extensive research behind this project and delve deeper into the scientific and cultural issues addressed by the exhibition.
The artists
Sophia Al-Maria, Giorgio Andreotta Calò, Shuvinai Ashoona, Anonymous Veneto, Ursula Biemann, Nina Canell, Vija Celmins, Paolo Cirio, Gustave Courbet, Vittore Grubicy de Dragon, Jason Dodge, Ayan Farah, Theaster Gates, Beate Geissler & Oliver Sann, Antony Gormley, Hans Haacke, Ichoryusai Hiroshige, Katsushika Hokusai, Jitish Kallat, Anne-Christine Klarmann, Zdeněk Košek, Goshka Macuga, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Santu Mofokeng, Plinio Nomellini, Carlo Francesco Nuvolone, Alix Oge, Richard Onyango, Chantal Peñalosa, Dan Peterman, Nick Raffel, Raqs Media Collective, Gerhard Richter, Thomas Ruff, Tiffany Sia, Himali Singh Soin, Vivian Suter, Fredrik Vaerslev, Pieter Vermeersch, Pae White, Tsutomu Yamamoto, Yang Yongliang.
