A groundbreaking art exhibition at The 8th Floor gallery in Manhattan is reshaping how audiences view landscape-based art in an era of environmental crisis and cultural displacement. "Romance, Regret, and Regeneration in Landscape," curated by Anjuli Nanda Diamond and George Bolster, presents a complex examination of how different cultures and perspectives interpret our relationship with the natural world.
The exhibition features works that go beyond typical environmental art by incorporating diverse cultural viewpoints and challenging Western romanticized notions of landscape. Artists like Alexis Rockman contribute thickly painted works such as "Lake Athabasca" (2024), while Richard Moss presents spectrally enhanced photographs including "Intensive Cattle Feedlot, Rondônia" (2020), offering hyper-saturated images of environmental devastation that have become common in climate change-focused exhibitions.
One of the exhibition's most compelling pieces is Francis Alÿs's collaborative video work "When Faith Moves Mountains (making of)" (2002), created with Rafael Ortega and Cuauhtémoc Medina. The 15-minute video documents hundreds of volunteers working together to move a 1,500-foot-wide sand dune just a few inches. Unlike traditional artist documentaries that focus on the creator's vision, this work centers on the experiences and perspectives of local participants who helped realize the project during Peru's Fujimori dictatorship period.
The video initially appears similar to Les Blank's documentary "Burden of Dreams" (1982), which chronicled Werner Herzog's challenging filming of "Fitzcarraldo" in Peru. However, while Herzog's project required moving part of a mountain and dragging a steamboat uphill at tremendous risk to local Machiguenga people, Alÿs's documentation prioritizes the voices of community members who initially viewed the sand dune project as silly but came to appreciate the collective organizing it required.
Another significant work, "A History of Stone, Origin and Myth" (2016) by Megs Morley and Tom Flanagan, explores the relationship between geological time and human history. The video installation shows massive stone blocks being quarried in Ireland while a narrator discusses "the labor of history." The work connects resource extraction with the creation of colonial monuments from prehistoric stones, examining how these slowly degrading structures attempt to preserve a limited version of history in ancient materials that existed long before humans and will endure well beyond our existence.
The exhibition also features a powerful collection of artworks and artifacts from the Chagossian people, including paintings by Clement Siatous and archival materials from the Chago Research Initiative displayed in museum vitrines. Unlike many Indigenous groups with ancient histories, Chagossian culture emerged in the late 18th century when formerly enslaved Africans, along with people from Malaysia and India, were brought to the archipelago by French colonists to work on plantations.
Siatous's vibrant paintings depicting daily life on his home island of Diego Garcia directly challenge British government claims that the archipelago never had its own permanent population. The Chagossian cultural preservation efforts, particularly following their forced expulsion by the British in the 1970s, raise important questions about hybrid cultures and relationships to place that result from population movements across geographic boundaries—issues that feel especially relevant during our current era of increased global displacement.
The exhibition's curator has noted how the show was inspired by observations about different approaches to landscape art, particularly contrasting Western romantic portrayals of unpopulated wilderness viewed from a distance with Indigenous artistic traditions based on living with the land through continuing adaptation. This perspective shift reflects broader conversations in contemporary art about whose viewpoints are represented and to what end.
Other notable works in the exhibition include pieces by Yang Yongliang, watercolors by Alexis Rockman, a single-channel digital video "Wanga Watangumirri Dharuk" (2011) by Ishmael Marika, and Joseph Beuys's color offset lithograph "Difesa della Natura" (1984). These diverse works collectively create what curators describe as a nuanced examination of landscape art's role in our rapidly changing world.
"Romance, Regret, and Regeneration in Landscape" continues at The 8th Floor gallery, located at 17 West 17th Street in Manhattan's Flatiron district, through December 13. The exhibition represents a growing trend in contemporary art toward more inclusive and culturally diverse perspectives on environmental and landscape themes, challenging visitors to consider multiple viewpoints on our shared terrain and the complex relationships between culture, history, and place.
