Elizabeth Xi Bauer presents É a lama, é a lama, an exhibition of four contemporary artists and one artist group whose practices acknowledge our climate emergency. Works by Maria Thereza Alves, Tapfuma Gutsa, ikkibawiKrrr, Oswaldo Maciá and Uriel Orlow will be exhibited.

In É a lama, é a lama, each of the artists turn their gaze to one aspect of our planet: flora, fauna, water, fire, geological formations and typhoons are some of the issues that this cohort approaches to address global warming.

The artists in this exhibition are from four continents, thus bringing together various cultural backgrounds that share concerns surrounding the health of our ecosystem. They further share an understanding of the earth as a holistic body, where the wellbeing of one part is indissociable from the wellbeing of the whole.

The exhibition title, Portuguese for ‘it’s the mud, it’s the mud’, is borrowed from Tom Jobim’s eponymous Águas de Março (Waters of March), which the musician wrote in both English and Portuguese. By doing so, Jobim signified the rain-showers that are characteristic of March – or at least used to be – through two geographical perspectives: the Global South, where the rains signal summer is over, and the Global North, whereby turn the phenomena welcomes spring. The announcement of the mud has an eerie parallel with Maria Thereza Alves’ sculptural painting Rio doce: Sweet No More (2017), which depicts the Samarco dam disaster from 2015 that released several dozens of millions of cubic metres of mine tailings into the Doce River, in Brazil.

Elizabeth Xi Bauer presents É a lama, é a lama which will run from 4th August to 16th September 2023, open Wednesday through to Saturday, 12 – 6 pm or by appointment. A Private View will be held on 3rd August 2023, 6 – 8 pm.

Elizabeth Xi Bauer Gallery
Fuel Tank, 8-12 Creekside
London SE8 3DX
020 3048 5220
contact@lizxib.com