Forest Law

Forest Law
By Ursula Biemann and Paulo Tavares
October 3 - December 3, 2018
Opening Reception: Wed, October 3 at 3-7 p.m.
Mary Porter Sesnon Art Gallery, UC Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA

The UC Santa Cruz Institute of the Arts and Sciences, in collaboration with the Mary Porter Sesnon Art Gallery and the Center for Creative Ecologies, is proud to present Forest Law, an exhibition by artist-researcher Ursula Biemann and architect Paulo Tavares.

Forest Law, 2014, is a 38-minute video essay and book drawn from research carried out by Biemann and Tavares in the Ecuadorian Amazon. It considers the legal cases which plead for the rights of nature against the dramatic expansion of large-scale extraction activities in the region, including the trial won by the indigenous people of Sarayuku based on their cosmology of the living forest. The project creatively maps the historical, political, and ecological dimensions of these trials on behalf of the forest and the people who cultivate the forest, tracing the entanglements and frictions between the ethical and epistemic stakes these cases raise.

Forest Law brings together the legal, ecological, cosmological and scientific dimensions in the battles against climate change.