Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1172208
THIS WEEK ART maltatoday | SUNDAY • 29 SEPTEMBER 2019 4 Ahead of the MICAS International Art Weekend, curator Rebecca Lewin of the Serpentine Galleries speaks to TEODOR RELJIC about displaying Pierre Huyghe's iconic sculpture ''Exomind (Deep Water)'' at Buskett Gardens – a striking work that addresses the urgent realities of our connection with the natural environment in the era of climate change Teodor Reljic What do you believe to be the most powerful take-away message and impression from Pierre Huyghe's 'Exomind', and how do you hope Maltese audiences will respond to it? The central gesture of this work is to place a figurative sculpture in a site that can be accessed by the public. This act is something that humans have been doing for millenia – consider the extraordinary ancient sculptures discov- ered around Malta – and I hope that Maltese audiences will draw on the familiarity of this encounter as a start- ing point. What is more surprising is the obscur- ing of the figure's head by a bee hive, populated by bees and full of honey produced by bees that are pollinating plants in the vicinity of the sculpture. When we look at Exomind (Deep Water), we are considering two cultures: the human visual culture that has produced the sculpture; and the community of bees that has built the hive. It's no longer possible to sepa- rate 'human' from 'nature', and perhaps the most urgent message of this work is how deeply embedded within our environment we are, and how entangled within the millions of systems that organise it. Would you say Exomind is a 'universal' piece, despite being – by its very nature – site-specific to wherever it is placed? How do you configure and describe this dynamic, as a curator? Exomind (Deep Water) is typical of Huyghe's prac- tice, and is the kind of work that presents interesting and unusual challenges for cura- tors. The etymology of the word 'curator' is 'one who cares for', and within the sealed gallery space, this has come to mean someone who prevents the artwork from changing its state. A work like this, on the other hand, requires the curator to allow for change, growth, even de- cay. Like the artist, we have to be prepared for change, and respond to it as it occurs. We can no longer remain invisible, but rather have to become part of a community that cares for the sites and living entities that Huyghe brings together. Although the details of the piece may be impossible to replicate from site to site, the network of people and things that it draws into its orbit is created anew each time it is installed. How would you describe the Serpentine Galleries' relationship with Pierre Huyghe, and what is it about his work that you find particularly germane to the mission and vision of your space? Our relationship with Huyghe goes back many years, most recently through the development of our exhi- bition with him, and further through projects that he de- veloped with our Artistic Di- rector, Hans Ulrich Obrist. Huyghe's exhibition at the Serpentine in 2018 formed part of a thread of program- ming that we have developed in the last few years, which has been inspired by the aims of artists such as John Latham, Barbara Steveni and the Artist Placement Group "Arts organisations should be sites of communication, bringing together diverse ways of looking at the world, to spark interest, curiosity and debate" A potent reminder of our entanglement with nature Pierre Huyghe