Super Dakota

Super Dakota is pleased to present Ecosystems of Relations, a new collective exhibition dedicated to presenting works, which relate to the notions and the environment of intimacy, togetherness, empathy and community. The exhibition will be on view from 13 January until 19 February, 2022. The exhibition borrows its title from Poetics of Relations by a Martinique-born philosopher, Edouard Glissant who called attention to the means of global exchange that resist homogenization of culture and produce differences from which potentialities of new systems emerge.

One significant research pillar behind the Ecosystems of Relations is Bell Hooks, an American author, feminist and social activist. In her writings, she reminds us the urgency of revisiting the fundamental questions — “What is the state of love and intimacy in the age of Internet, social media and high capitalism?”, “What is our “collective mind”? To answer these questions, we turn to each other to collectively renegotiate and reimagine the articulation and implementation of alternative ecosystems of relations.

The age of neoliberal self-care, in which our digital avatars float through the endless stream of social networks, has ironically led to an increasingly shared experience of separation and alienation. As a result, there seems to exist an urgent need for a critical reimagination of alternative possibilities of relating to one another as never before. In light of this, the exhibition reflects upon the value of re-experiencing the shared sources of connection through recovered knowledge of collectivity. 

The exhibition presents a wide range of works stretching over paintings, sculptures, videos and performance works by the following artists: Alex Clarke, Jeremy Deller, Krista Gay, Carmen Kirkby, Jennifer J. Lee, Connor McNicholas, Magali Reus, Ariane Schick, Julia Wachtel and Alberta Whittle. In different ways, these artists re-discover the infinite possibilities of relations between oneself and Other as situated within an environment, ultimately leading towards that which lies perhaps in between the places we occupy. 

Furthermore, the selected body of works attempts to deal with the notions of mutual exchange, the power of participation and togetherness as situated specifically in the age of privilege. Significantly, ideas behind some of the works magnify and vocalize impact of the colonialism and the past, continuous inequality and evolving identity politics. If one questions the impetus behind re-discovering collectivity and spaces of liberation throughout the spectrum of visual and media culture, one has to re-contextualize, re-learn, undo, reform and alternate their own perception of the world in general. These works, therefore, invite us to re-scale our empathy and nourish mutual support, solidarity, complementarity, respect for one another and care for the horizontal and radiant plentitude of the living that we call an environment.