Fábio Cunha, Marie Lukasiewicz, Ana Zibelnik “Urgent Arts of Living”

Urgent Arts of Living is a catalogue of group exhibition at Kaunas Photography Galley that was exhibited on June of 2019. Cale Garrido curated show and the catalogue presents works by Fábio Cunha, Marie Lukasiewicz and Ana Zibelnik.

Since the very first warnings of climate change at the end of the 1970s, its causes and dangers have been mostly told through facts and data. We feel immune, are addicted to our way of life and too lazy to give up some of our privileges for the good of the planet we live on.

We need an imagery that affects us critically, that makes as see reality, that drives us into action.

Humans think in symbols. In the photographic language, metaphors are valid figures with a great capacity to shift deep-rooted mental conceptions. The exhibition explores how the arts can foster behavior change and engagement, moving us on a visceral, more human level in a way that facts simply cannot. Featuring new work by Marie Lukasiewicz, Fábio Cunha and Ana Zibelnik, the exhibition Urgent Arts of Living aims to create a space where both artists and audience can imaginatively and critically engage in constructive debate about the ecological and social crisis that surrounds us today; to begin a dialogue that contributes to profound and urgently needed change.

In his series We Still Kill Pigs With Our Hands, Fábio Cunha portraits a familiar tradition a rural area of Portugal, where he lived until the age of 15. In an era of massive production and consumption, how these people use their hands is shown as an act of resistance to a world that craves the new and easily accessible. His performative intervention in public space To Walk a Mountain encapsulates this same idea. The 4,5 x 2,30 meters structure stands on wheels and waits to be moved. It is a poetic statement that a person has the strength to move a mountain with his hands.

In Beyond Coral White, Marie Lukasiewicz questions our habits of consumption. She has developed a multi-layered visual investigation of the bleaching and destruction of corals, and the exploitation of its properties in the parapharmaceutical industry.

We are the ones turning is an evocative photographic series by Ana Zibelnik. In her work, she zooms in on what it means to be running out of time and questions whether the inevitability of death can help us to re-think our role in nature.

This exhibition and the book is a part of Parallel – European Photo Based Platform.