Into the Woods

PRESS RELEASE

Into the Woods. Approaches to the Forest Ecosystem

As part of the Klima Biennale Wien, KunstHausWien is presenting an extensive group exhibition on one of the world’s most important ecosystems - the forest. Sixteen contemporary artistic positions are dedicated to the forest habitat, its ecological processes, and its threats.

The world’s forests are more than ever a reminder of the imbalance of our planet: forests filter water and air, provide resources and food, are habitat for a large part of the land-living species, promote human health, and stabilize the climate of our Earth as important carbon stores. Their deforestation and profit-oriented exploitation are driving the ecological crisis forward, while, at the same time, global warming fuels forest loss.

Using artistic projects on a wide variety of forest regions around the world - from the Amazon rainforest to the Embobut forest in Kenya and the primeval forests of the Carpathians to pine forests in Switzerland and local forest areas - the exhibition addresses pressing questions about this sensitive ecosystem. On the one hand, the works on display explore the human influence on the state of the forests and their destruction, and on the other hand address the collective and symbiotic activities of the forest ecosystem. Reckless deforestation, the effects of forest monocultures, the tension between economic forest use and sustainable forest protection, the financialization of the climate crisis, and the endangerment of forests by global warming are also thematized in the exhibition, as are the ecological processes and complex interactions that underlie the forest ecosystem.

The artists of the exhibition illuminate the central role of the world’s forests for the health and stability of our planet. The research-based, inspiring, poetic, and often collaborative works with scientists make the complex topic tangible and enable new perspectives on an ecosystem that is allegedly so familiar to us.

Curator:
Sophie Haslinger works as a curator with a focus on contemporary photography and ecological topics. Since 2022, she has been a curator at KunstHausWien, where she develops the exhibition program of the house. Before that, she worked at the same institution as an assistant curator and for the Foto Wien photo festival. In addition, she has curated dozens of independent curatorial projects in galleries, off-spaces, and exhibition spaces. Sophie Haslinger holds a master’s degree from the University of Vienna in Art History and Communication Sciences and was a Curatorial Research Fellow at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago. She regularly writes texts for exhibition catalogs, artist books, and magazines.

Artists:
Rodrigo Arteaga, Anca Benera & Arnold Estefán, Eline Benjaminsen & Elias Kimaiyo, Alma Heikkilä, Monica Ursina Jäger, Markus Jeschaunig, Isa Klee, Susanne Kriemann, Jeewi Lee, Antje Majewski, Richard Mosse, Katie Paterson, Oliver Ressler , Abel Rodríguez, Diana Scherer, Rasa Šmite & Raitis Šmits