Installation view
of 《Echoes of Gaia》 ©The Page Gallery. Photo: Yang Ian.The Page Gallery is presenting 《Echoes of Gaia》, a group exhibition
featuring six artists based in Berlin, on view until July 26. Curated by
Keumhwa Kim—co-artistic director of the 2025 Sea Art Festival at the Busan
Biennale—this exhibition reimagines Earth as a living entity and sensorially
evokes its resonance through the works of Aliou Diack, Jeewi Lee, Farkhondeh
Shahroudi, Anna Steinert, Sandra Vásquez de la Horra, and Viron Erol Vert.
In Greek mythology, Gaia is the primordial
mother who gave birth to gods, humans, and all living beings, and is revered as
the goddess of the Earth. Based on Bruno Latour’s concept from Facing
Gaia, this exhibition no longer regards Gaia as a passive backdrop,
but rather as an active being—one that senses, responds, and resists.
Installation view
of 《Echoes of Gaia》 ©The Page Gallery. Photo: Yang Ian.Reflecting the ongoing wars, ecological
collapse, and perceptual disorientation of the 21st century, Gaia’s body is in
a constant state of distortion and vibration—caught in the cycle of collapse
and regeneration, disappearance and emergence. 《Echoes
of Gaia》 seeks to amplify the Earth’s resonance as it
is felt through the rhythms of life and death, renewal and circulation. Through
artistic gestures that carry the potential for healing, mediation, and
transformation, the participating artists question the senses and relationships
we have lost.
Jeewi Lee,
Illumination of the tears (눈물의 빛),
2025, Installation made of tress and LED lights, size variable, Installation
view of 《Echoes of Gaia》 ©The Page
Gallery. Photo: Yang Ian.Rooted in diverse cultural backgrounds, the
artists reflect on themes of multiculturalism, hybridity, and critical
perspectives on nature and the environment in the post-Anthropocene era. Their
practices are shaped by intersecting experiences within the complex, layered
urban landscape of Berlin.
For instance, Korean artist Jeewi Lee
collaborates with traditional Korean lacquer artisans to transform the sap of
the lacquer tree into traces of tears, wounds, and healing—materializing the
cycles of growth and decay as a substance of time.
Installation view
of 《Echoes of Gaia》 ©The Page Gallery. Photo: Yang Ian.Through the diverse approaches presented by
the participating artists, the exhibition explores how the act of ritual today
can function not merely as repetition or formality, but as an artistic medium
for healing, transformation, and mediation. The artists suggest that
contemporary art can serve as a conduit—connecting human and non-human, memory
and ecology, interiority and community—through embodied performance, sensitive
engagements with material and sensation, and the recontextualization of myth
and cultural heritage.
《Echoes of Gaia》
extends from the ‘Speaking to Ancestors’ project (co-curated by Pauline
Doutrougne), held in Berlin between 2022 and 2024, and draws theoretical
inspiration from Sylvia Wynter’s Ceremony Must Be Found: After
Humanism (1984) and Byung-Chul Han’s The Disappearance of
Rituals (2019).
The exhibition reflects on how rituals,
myths, and traditional cultural practices can foster new forms of collective
consciousness. It asks whether art can become a ceremonial act that restores
our relationships with the erased and suppressed, and revives the senses we
have lost.
Participating
Artists: Aliou
Diack, Jeewi Lee, Farkhondeh Shahroudi, Anna Steinert, Sandra Vásquez de la
Horra, Viron Erol Vert
