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We live in an period of what Adrian Parr calls “unthinkables.” From local weather collapse and ecological degradation to displacement and battle, the litany of political and social fractures producing headlines can really feel relentless. However in “Intimate Unthinkables,” which opens this spring on the European Cultural Centre through the 2026 Venice Biennale, the artist and UNESCO Chair invitations a reimagining of the unthinkable grounded not in despair, however in care. The exhibition pairs Parr’s conceptual work with the tender, humanist sculpture of Chinese language modernist Liu Shiming in a well timed dialogue that explores themes of empathy, embodiment and collective resilience.
Although extra widely known for her management in sustainable design and water justice, Parr’s creative observe is as wide-ranging as her work in sustainability tradition and local weather politics. Materially oriented, she engages with mediums as numerous as paint, soil and movie to inform highly effective tales of environmental and social collapse. Her curatorial work is equally expansive, bringing collectively artwork, design, ecology and philosophy. “Intimate Unthinkables” will discover not solely international upheaval—one thing Parr engages with throughout her oeuvre—but additionally life, the physique and the facility of humanity. A pioneer of recent Chinese language sculpture, Liu Shiming developed a particular visible language rooted in on a regular basis life, resisting each socialist realism and Western modernist mimicry to seek out energy in small gestures, home areas and the consolation of the physique.
The pairing is each aesthetic and ideological. The natural curves and obscured figures in Parr’s watercolor-and-soil work mirror Liu’s empathetic figurative sculptures in not solely their intimacy but additionally their embodied resilience, providing a counternarrative to international antagonism—one which foregrounds our shared humanity and the chance for reconnection. “Futurity, because the exhibition proposes, shouldn’t be a hard and fast horizon however a collective invitation: to examine alternate realities, to do not forget that neither social battle nor environmental degradation are inevitable,” Parr advised Observer. “‘Intimate Unthinkables’ is hopeful exactly as a result of it locates this potential throughout the on a regular basis, throughout the gestures of care, endurance and connection that persist even within the midst of upheaval.”
As each curator and exhibiting artist, she brings these practices into dialog to suggest a distinct structure of connection, by means of shared reminiscence, materials poetics and a spotlight to the odd. We linked along with her forward of the exhibition’s opening on Could 9 to debate the origins of “Intimate Unthinkables,” the ethics of cross-cultural dialogue, how artwork can mannequin care in occasions of disaster and extra.
How did the present’s pairing come about? What specific resonance or stress between your observe and Liu’s work appeared becoming for this dialogue?
I first encountered Liu Shiming’s work practically two years in the past, after I visited an exhibition of his sculptures and drawings on the Shiming Gallery in New York Metropolis. I used to be instantly struck by the sensitivity he brings to documenting the human situation on an intimate scale. I used to be particularly intrigued by his sculptures of ladies, documenting moments of affection, tenderness and laughter. These works held a quiet depth that stayed with me and hovered round within the background while engaged on the Balagan collection throughout an artist residency I used to be invited to attend on the Marble Home in Vermont. I felt that his observe resonated with the methods wherein I discover ladies’s lives.
On the residency, I started to consider what it could imply to create an set up in collaboration with Shiming, somebody whose visible language is so rooted within the aesthetic and sociocultural specificities of Asia and which had been produced throughout a time of profound socioeconomic change in China, in a context fairly totally different from my very own. But inside that distinction, I additionally sensed a shared vocabulary: a method of taking a look at and sensing gender, intimacy and the on a regular basis gestures that form {our relationships} to 1 one other.
The collaboration emerged from that stress and affinity. I needed to convey our views into dialog with each other in a method that honors the specificity of particular person ladies’s experiences while additionally recognizing the universality of care, connection, power and vulnerability. The venture grew to become a chance to discover how two distinct contexts can communicate to one another and, in doing so, provide a wider understanding of the intimate types of resilience that bind us throughout cultures.
Your notion of “unthinkables” (battle, local weather emergencies, international battle) is bleak, however you reference cross-cultural connections as a counternarrative. Is the present extra broadly optimistic than the title may make it appear?
The thought of unthinkables is deployed right here as each a horizon of risk and as a mode of critique. The title ”Intimate Unthinkables” inevitably evokes a way of darkness, of the unthinkable as tied to battle, loss and the precarity of environmental degradation. But my intention is to not dwell in despair, however to open an area the place the unthinkable turns into an act of creativeness. The exhibition seeks to perforate the boundary between what’s thinkable and unthinkable, inviting us to think about how our capability to think about is itself constrained by behavior, consolation and inherited buildings of thought.
What’s deemed unthinkable usually marks the boundaries of empathy and imaginative and prescient: our incapacity to step past what feels secure, or to reimagine {our relationships} to 1 one other, to our collective and particular histories, and to the delicate ecologies we inhabit. On this sense, ”Intimate Unthinkables” turns into a provocation; to maneuver past these limits; to train creativeness as a type of braveness and hope. Futurity, because the exhibition proposes, shouldn’t be a hard and fast horizon however a collective invitation: to examine alternate realities, to do not forget that neither social battle nor environmental degradation are inevitable. It’s hopeful exactly as a result of it locates this potential throughout the on a regular basis, throughout the gestures of care, endurance and connection that persist even within the midst of upheaval.
The unthinkable, then, shouldn’t be merely the unimaginable disaster; it’s also an unimaginable risk. It gestures towards the yet-to-be-thought, a capability that’s shared throughout the social subject, and an moral crucial to think about a world that might be in any other case. I’m attempting to activate that creativeness, to cross the brink of what appears not possible, and to acknowledge in our personal tenderness, and in our encounters with others, the quiet beginnings of one other world.
The present brings collectively japanese and western views. What do “western” and “japanese” imply on this context, and the way do you navigate the danger of reinforcing simplistic binaries?
Thanks for this query; it is a vital one. This exhibition brings two artists from two totally different elements of the world and from distinct cultural positions into dialog, to not reinforce a binary of east and west, however to maneuver past it. Somewhat than staging a cultural distinction, I’m searching for an area of encounter, the place distinct histories, aesthetics and lived realities meet on their very own phrases. As postcolonial concept reminds us, the violence of 1 worldview colonizing one other lies in representational erasure: the company of 1 group coming on the expense of the company of one other who’s denied the chance to characterize themselves on their very own phrases. Right here, each Shiming and I communicate from inside our respective contexts; we’re every attentive to the textures of odd life and the methods wherein ladies’s experiences reveal the heart beat of broader social transformation.
Shiming’s work paperwork a selected second in China’s historical past, an period of speedy urbanization and social change. He turns towards the home realm, akin to ladies cooking, feeding, mothering, tending and child-rearing. These on a regular basis gestures are each tender but resilient, and on this method, I see them as quiet acts of resistance. Amid this social upheaval, Shiming reveals how ladies maintain the delicate cloth of group, how they nurture, nourish and maintain life collectively on the degree of the intimate. His work already bridges japanese and western aesthetic traditions, as it’s grounded in conventional Chinese language strategies and knowledgeable by the sensitivity of French Realism.
My work, against this, explores how ladies’s experiences and recollections are inscribed by relations of energy; how social change and political violence are etched into our flesh and recollections. Participating with the corporeality of ladies’s experiences, I interrogate the thoughts–physique dualism that has haunted western thought since Plato, turning it inside out. I’m inviting the viewers into an affective encounter, asking them not merely to look, however to really feel, to inhabit the shared areas of vulnerability, resistance and renewal. I’m all in favour of difficult the hierarchies of gaze and presence, foregrounding the feminist perception that sure experiences and recollections are privileged over others and that visibility itself is political.
By getting into into dialog with Shiming’s work, I hope to perforate the east–west divide, revealing not opposition however resonance. On this set up, our works converge across the on a regular basis as a web site of endurance, the place the private and the social intertwine, the place non-public acts of care resist disappearance. Briefly, Intimate Unthinkables is a meditation on how ladies reside by means of change, how the home can shelter small acts of resistance to violence by means of a language of care and feeling; and the way collectively these can change into a floor upon which our shared humanity is remade.
Past the theme, how does the fabric expression within the present align along with your work as a UNESCO Chair?
My work begins with feminine experiences and recollections; not as pictures however as fields of historical past, resistance and renewal. For me, the way in which ladies intimately negotiate life produces shared zones of feminine expertise which can be each an archive and territories of wrestle and contestation. I’m working throughout the areas and occasions by means of which cultural scripts are articulated and rewritten. I’m fascinated by how ladies’s realities have been weaponized and mythologized and contained in idealized types, but additionally proceed to persist, to push again and reshape their very own subjectivities and context. As I work, the supplies cooperate of their undoing. The canvas shouldn’t be a passive layer, however a participant that’s kneaded; I exploit trend supplies, akin to feathers, cloth and glitter, not as ornamentation however as a method of disruption. I drag the canvases and paper throughout inside areas and out of doors landscapes. I smear the determine with ash, sap and soil. On this method, the materialities of cultural and ecological life intervene in my processes of picture making. I consider them as panorama portraits. These acts of wear and tear and accumulation mirror the social codes inscribed into ladies’s experiences, recollections and emotions, and the way we’re infused by and in addition push again towards social stereotypes and cultural norms. These ecocultural materialities write their very own language into the determine, blurring the boundary between the place the determine and world begins and ends. In that blurring, I discover a form of company within the refusal to be neatly constrained or clearly learn.
My work’s stress lies in publicity and concealment, fragility and endurance; summoning a form of perseverance, just like the quiet, endless work of carving out areas of selfhood inside methods bent on overdetermining what a lady’s recollections, emotions and physique can imply. The cultural artifacts, constructed environments and pure parts akin to ash, mud, sap, branches and soil, that I rub into the floor or over which I drag the paper and canvas aren’t marks of injury however testimonies and proof of passage, of weathering, and of endurance. By way of this, the determine turns into panorama as a lot as panorama turns into the determine, and the supplies (together with my very own physique and bodily power) present a language of feminist renewal, the place magnificence and brutality intermingle, the place company shouldn’t be attained in perfection or readability, however within the mess, the residue, the turning into.
In respect to the works by Shiming on this exhibition, I’m intrigued by the way in which he pertains to the medium of clay with unbelievable sensitivity and immediacy. The clay, for him, appears to be a medium that bears the struggles of the very histories, labors and gestures of the on a regular basis lives of ladies residing by means of a time of great social change in China. Given the big bodily challenges Shiming endured over the course of his life, it’s fascinating to me that he selected to work in clay, a medium that calls for an excessive amount of bodily exertion. This alternative of that medium suggests a dialog between his physique’s personal limitations and the fabric’s weight and plasticity, a fabric that he usually dug up himself, so there may be additionally this connection between the constrained bodily company of his personal physique as realized in dialog with the earth. What struck me about his observe is that this wrestle between physique, reminiscence, feeling and the land went on to tell an artwork observe that’s infused with a rare sensitivity and honesty. His sculptures of ladies aren’t idealistic however emerge from conflicting areas and occasions of fragility and power (a kiss on a park bench, a mom feeding her child, mom and baby holding arms). It’s a steadiness between the artist’s physique, the resistance and weight of the materiality of clay, and the circumstances of on a regular basis life. In some ways, my very own observe is that this: after I drag canvases alongside the bottom, throughout the flooring and partitions of my studio or by means of soil and the forest—after I go away the canvases outdoors unprotected towards the weather and climate—I’m negotiating with the materiality and reminiscence of ecological life. Ecological life is a accomplice on this course of; it pushes again, it resists, permitting me to have interaction with different realities past my very own consolation zone. Like Shiming, in my work I have interaction in acts of listening and witnessing, inviting the fabric world into my pondering and making processes.
Shiming’s sensitivity to the on a regular basis lives of Chinese language ladies, paying attention to their gestures, their work, their pleasure and endurance, mirrors my curiosity within the methods ladies’s our bodies embody oppression and company, exhaustion and style. In numerous media and contexts, each Shiming’s clay figures and my well-worn canvases resonate with one another as every attests to the friction between physique and world, power and fragility, the seen and unseen. They’re manifestations of persistence, of the quiet form of resilience that lies inside quotidian types of materiality.
As to how my materials expression connects to my UNESCO work, my UNESCO work has been about humanizing huge knowledge by means of philosophical writings, storytelling, transferring picture, poetry and picture making. All through my observe, whether or not it entails portray, drawing, writing or movie, I’m within the materials as a form of witness to life. The imaginative strains of storytelling, the conceptual areas of philosophical pondering, and the physicality of matter bear traces of reminiscence, ache, pleasure, resilience, hope… Within the movies I’ve made in my capability as a UNESCO chair, I discover how ladies’s recollections, experiences and our bodies are articulated by means of methods of poverty and resilience. On this work, I discover the varied ways in which ladies take care of others and themselves, creating group within the course of. Whether or not in Nairobi’s casual communities; or the Native American communities combating the consequences of local weather change and environmental degradation; or the energetic materiality of water flows, the constructed surroundings and the climate, I observe how totally different materialities, our bodies, emotions and recollections intersect and form one another. Water, as an example, can possess each life and be a menace to it: water hydrates, floods, infects, heals and it additionally facilitates all life on earth. For one venture I documented the scenario of ladies in three totally different Native American communities (from Louisiana to Alaska), right here I sought to grasp by means of Native American feeling and reminiscence the materiality of water, the sacredness of water and the socially contested zones of water flows, the way it carries histories of displacement and renewal.
Usually I deal with the digicam as a porous physique of its personal, utilizing lengthy takes that enable the rhythms and textures of the world to unfold at their very own tempo; utilizing overexposure and a drift in time to therapeutic massage the materiality of movie itself by permitting the picture to disintegrate because it begins to quiver and blur. The fabric of movie on this occasion turns into a topic in its personal proper. For me movie making is a strategy of temporal feeling, and clearly all of the years I’ve spent studying Bergson, Levinas and Deleuze have influenced my strategy right here. After I drag a canvas by means of mud, when rain muddles the pigments or bark and sap go away a mark on the paper or canvas, I’m working with the identical ethics of collaboration, exhaustion and give up that inform the movies. Materiality shouldn’t be subservient to illustration; it has company. It intervenes. It alters the picture. On this method, the work turns into a spot of alternate the place human and beyond-human, our bodies and land, mingle and blend one another up.
So, the hyperlink between my practices stems from the idea that materiality has company, that the medium, reminiscence, storytelling, experiences and the bodily surroundings are all the time in dialogue. No matter methods I can render that entanglement seen and permit the world to put in writing itself into the work, from transferring picture to pigment and particles, that’s what I’m in search of.
In some ways, I’m attempting to let the world impress itself on the work, to embrace different types of realizing and present, making them seen and audible. Whether or not by means of movie, the place I’m following the beleaguered rhythms of a lady fetching giant containers of water that they haul or carry throughout the slums, or mounds of soil that change into the matter of the physique, I’m all in favour of how the fabric world presents a sworn statement to lives which can be so usually unseen or unheard. The aesthetic disruptions, the grain of movie, their overexposure, their stains and scars on canvas aren’t accidents however acts of recognition. This efficiency with concepts, tales, recollections and experiences produces pictures that emerge out of a course of of fabric mingling.
Going broader, what do you see the function of artwork and artists being in relation to each scholarship and activism?
I’m much less all in favour of artwork as a car for direct political motion, particularly in a second when activism has, in lots of contexts, change into extremely polarized. We’re residing by means of a social local weather wherein opposing political positions usually refuse real and tolerant engagement; hostility towards distinction has change into commonplace, even violent. Towards that backdrop, I’m within the moral potential of artwork; its capability to broaden our horizons, to develop empathy towards individuals and life types that fall outdoors our personal frames of reference. My earlier exhibition, ”Cease Proper There,” additionally on the European Cultural Middle in Venice, took this concept up by means of a collection of larger-than-life close-up portraits of ladies (hybrid portraits utilizing each my creativeness, recollections and pictures from widespread tradition) whose returned gaze unsettled and reconfigured the dynamic between viewer and seen. That confrontation, which attracts on Levinas’s thought of ethics as realized by means of a “face-to-face” encounter, is an area the place energy can shift, and the place recognition can happen, the place empathy turns into attainable.
So, after I take into consideration what has pushed me to make artwork, I take into consideration its capability to therapeutic massage generosity, curiosity, kindness and thoughtfulness, qualities that really feel more and more endangered by political polarization. Artwork can create the circumstances for extra peaceable methods of relating to 1 one other, not by prescribing a stance however by opening up an area wherein we are able to really feel and picture otherwise. That’s the spirit wherein this collaboration with Shiming emerged, and the aspiration that continues to information my work.
And what do you see as the moral accountability of curators working at present?
I see ethics and curatorial observe as linked by one thing like an umbilical wire. Ethics is the oxygen and the nutrient stream that sustains any considerate exhibition. Curating isn’t a impartial act; it’s a observe that should stay attentive to the complexities, urgencies and silences of the modern second. I consider a curator has a accountability to nurture the general public’s curiosity by opening pathways to beforehand unheard or unseen histories and experiences, and to take action with care. Exhibitions can orient us towards futurity by reminding us that what has been, and what at the moment exists, shouldn’t be mounted, that the world is all the time open to alter if we enable our imaginations to examine extra collaborative political, social, environmental, financial and non secular prospects. In that sense, curatorial work turns into an moral invitation: a method of making house for viewers to reimagine how we’d reside along with better tenderness and accountability.
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