Decolonial and Sustainable Art

The context of anthropogenic emissions reduction pushes the art institutional sector and art practitioners to rethink the model of representational art practice. Autonomy of practice and individualism should make way for a collaborative long term focus minded, targeted and solutions based way of thinking. Models of commonality or communality can possibly provide us a way forward. Putting the terms urgency and transition central to the tenet of art institutions I am asking the question, what does the act of representation mean in relation to the ecological crisis, a crisis demanding an active approach into inhabiting the world? Is there an ethics of representation that we should be taking into account when thinking about art institutional practice? We will be looking at the Jan van Eyck Academy as a case model and the struggle the institution is bearing in relation to the needed transition in times of ecological crisis.

- Hicham Khalidi, director of the Jan van Eyck Academy