Spora

Works currently on view by: Raven Chacon, Lee Mary Manning, Hendl Helen Mirra, Christian Nyampeta with Cass Nakashima, Uriel Orlow, Jenna Sutela, Vivian Suter

In May 2023, Swiss Institute launched Spora, a curatorial initiative centered in SI’s institutional imperative to integrate environmental consciousness and climate action into all facets of the institution. Like spores spreading throughout the physical structure of our building and permeating the immaterial processes of SI,Spora is an experiment that explores what a practice of environmental institutional critique could be.

Unfolding and growing over the course of two years, the artworks in the project are on long-term view in the non-gallery spaces of SI. In the stairways, hallways, roof, and other interstitial spaces, artists have contributed to the daily life, maintenance and functioning of the building with artworks that take shape through compost, plants, wall paint, public space and more. These include Jenna Sutela’s earth battery-powered oracle, Vivian Suter’s weather-exposed mural, Hendl Helen Mirra’s chance-determined background painting, Uriel Orlow’s planters filled with weeds from the surrounding neighborhood, Christian Nyampeta’s hosting structure that functions simultaneously as a floor sculpture, stage and outdoor seating furniture, a newly composed score as a large-scale mural by Raven Chacon, and Lee Mary Manning’s photographs merging private and public, natural and urban spaces.

The artworks at the core of Spora are accompanied by the institution’s initial steps towards climate action, begun in 2022, which take form as a thorough analysis of SI’s carbon emissions through transport, travel, energy, and other ecological and social factors, and a plan of actions developed with the entire SI team for reducing the institution’s environmental impact. SI will publish and share this process with the hopes to sprout inspiration and collaboration across institutional boundaries. Spora is conceived as an open-ended approach, which acknowledges that this is a continuous project that will generate more questions than answers. It is an attempt to germinate change while acknowledging context and limitations, with the understanding that this process is imperfect but urgent.

Spora and the accompanying event series, These Seasons, as well as the institutional initiatives of climate action, propose a start to a morphing process of reflection and transformation.