Staring at the Sun
Apr 5–14, 2019
The Art Pavilion, London
The exhibition Staring at the Sun forms part of EcoFutures, a city-wide arts festival held across East London. Curated by CUNTemporary, the festival brought together exhibitions, performances, screenings, residencies, and a conference under the shared framework of queer-feminist and decolonial ecology. Within this cultural setting, the exhibition situates artistic practices as forms of ecological critique and as imaginative blueprints for coexistence, care, and resistance.
The exhibition explores the paradox between humanity’s drive for infinite growth and the Earth’s limited capacity to regenerate. It reflects on the collective compulsion to “stare at the sun”—to pursue technological and industrial expansion despite its destructive consequences. Through speculative and poetic approaches, the participating artists confront questions of ecological collapse, consumption, and sustainability from queer and feminist perspectives.
The exhibition features international artists and theorists such as Micha Cárdenas, Eca Eps, Helena Hunter, Nadja Verena Marcin, Mary Maggic, Tabita Rezaire, Liz Rosenfeld, Pinar Yoldas, and Zheng Bo, working across video, performance, installation, sound, and mixed media. Their works investigate intersections between human and non-human worlds, the body as an ecological landscape, and the entanglement of gender, technology, and the environment.
Nadja Verena Marcin presented Ophelia (2017) as part of Staring at the Sun and the conference Queer-Feminist Ecocriticism in Live Art & Visual Cultures. In the video installation, Marcin reinterprets Shakespeare’s tragic heroine as an embodiment of human vulnerability in the face of climate catastrophe and gender inequality. Floating in a pool of blue water, the artist inhabits a suspended state between life and decay, beauty and toxicity. The work invokes the female body as a site of both fragility and resilience, revealing the intertwined destinies of femininity and nature within patriarchal and capitalist systems.
Staring at the Sun was held at The Art Pavilion, Mile End Park, London, as part of the EcoFutures festival, organized by CUNTemporary in collaboration with partner venues across East London. Marcin also took part in the festival’s conference Queer-feminist Ecocriticism in Live Art & Visual Cultures at Queen Mary University, alongside presenters such as Isabel Burr Raty, Silvia Federici, Gaia Giuliani, Wangechi Mutu, and Beth Stephens & Annie Sprinkle, discussing the theme Repair, Resist, Revitalize: New Synergies in the Anthropocene.
INSTITUTION
The Art Pavilion
Mile End Park
Clinton Road, London
E3 4QY – UK
LINK TO EXHIBITION
Staring at the Sun – Exhibition
Queer-feminist Ecocriticism in Live Art & Visual Cultures –International Conference
Ecofutures – Ecofutures Festival
CURATOR
CUNTemporary
ARTISTS
Eca Eps, Helena Hunter, Liz Rosenfeld, Mary Maggic, Micha Cárdenas, Nadja Verena Marcin, Pinar Yoldas, Tabita Rezaire, and Zheng Bo
PRESS
Ashleigh Kane, “This new festival unpacks the climate crisis through a queer, feminist lens,” Dazed, London, April 2, 2019.
SPONSORS
The project was supported by Arts Council England, the British Association for American Studies (BAAS), the U.S. Embassy London, the European Cultural Foundation, and Compagnia di San Paolo. Additional supporters included Tower Hamlets, Queen Mary University of London, the Live Art Development Agency (LADA), Artsadmin, Chisenhale Dance Space, Genesis, the Women’s Environmental Network, Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club, Stitches in Time, Late@FRMP, P & S Solution Scaffolding, and Triffids.