Los Angeles has no shortage of art. Besides the city’s many prestigious art institutions and boulevards decorated with swatches of street art, it’s also full to the brim with  galleries showing every expression and medium possible. The Brick, a nonprofit visual art space that only recently put down permanent roots in the city, is no exception. For its inaugural exhibition in its new permanent location in Larchmont, The Brick is presenting Life on Earth: Art and Ecofeminism. 

The exhibit contains works that span the last four decades of ecofeminist thought and action. Consisting of work from eighteen international artists and collectives, Life on Earth evokes the spirit of cooperation, intersectionality, and joy. The subject matter of the exhibition is as broad as it is fascinating. Some pieces look at witchcraft, or deep time, or different plants and their uses. Others explore indigenous people’s theories about the creation of the universe, while still others delve into themes of science fiction or hydrofeminism—a perspective that investigates the connection between humans and water. 

The artists—-including Alliance of the Southern Triangle (A.S.T.), Francesca Gabbiani, Masumi Hayashi, Institute of Queer Ecology, Tabita Rezaire, Yétúndé Olagbaju, Aviva Rahmani, Yo-E Ryou, Emilija Škarnulytė, and A.L. Steiner—question humankind’s current role in nature, rejecting anthropocentric notions about gender and ecology in the process. Life on Earth makes use of paintings, photography, videography, performance art, sculpture and more as it simultaneously looks at past ecofeminist works and to the future of how we interact with the natural world.  

Ecofeminist thought, practices and expression from multiple generations find a home in Life on Earth. Feminist performance artist and photographer Leslie Labowitz Starus’ SPROUTIME series, a photo installation begun in 1979 with the intention of exploring the interaction between ecofeminism and survival, will be shown in the same space as Otobong Nkanga’s 2015 Tsumeb Fragments, a mixed-media sculpture that utilizes archival imagery, a floating mound of copper, and performance documentation to explore a different perspective of the colonial history of mineral mining in Namibia. New commissions, installations and mixed-media sculptures produced by Alicia Barney Caldas, Alicia Piller, Carolina Caycedo, Kite, Maria Maea and Meech Boakye round off the expansive collection. 

Although Life on Earth was originally conceived in 2018 and linked to a research fellowship from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the multidisciplinary exhibit is now one of the offspring of PST ART: Art & Science Collide, a Getty initiative that includes 70 institutions across Southern California. The goal of the initiative is to make connections between art and science in an effort to explore and educate about urgent issues, a task that Life on Earth does not fall short of with their exploration into new ways of thinking of and creating with the natural environment. The Brick, which has made it a point to include diverse voices and perspectives, repurpose materials and, of course, track the carbon footprint of the inaugural exhibition, will be showing Life on Earth: Art and Ecofeminism from September 15 to December 21 of this year.