Beyond Extinction: Art & Visual Culture for Biodiversity & Justice

Event Details

• Monday, October 7, 2024
  7:30 PM - 9:30 PM
  City: Peterborough
  ENW 114
  Building: Gzowski College
  Cost: Free

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The Ashley Fellowship, featuring Subhankar Banerjee presents "Beyond Extinction: Art & Visual Culture for Biodiversity & Justice" 

Description: 

Subhankar will share his recent and ongoing work from three places: the Arctic in the Canada-US borderland (where he first became an environmental artist and advocate); the Chihuahuan desert in the Mexico-US borderland (where he now lives); and the Sundarban mangrove of the Bangladesh-India borderland (near where he was born). In each instance, he will offer a long view—spanning decades, centuries, even millennia—to show how art and visual culture can reframe our understanding of the intensifying biodiversity crisis. He will also explain how images can help shape a more inclusive and just framework for biodiversity conservation that honors the rights and needs of Indigenous and other rural peoples.

Speaker Bio:

Subhankar Banerjee is a photographer, writer, curator, and conservationist. He is a professor of Art & Ecology and founding director of the Center for Environmental Arts & Humanities at the University of New Mexico. Since 2002, he has been working closely with Indigenous Gwich’in and Iñupiat elders (who are among his most important teachers), and scientists and conservationists in Alaska. His first book and the companion exhibition Seasons of Life and Land: Arctic National Wildlife Refuge contributed significantly to the campaign to protect the internationally significant wildlife nursery and a place important to Indigenous peoples from oil and gas development. Editor of Arctic Voices: Resistance at the Tipping Point, and coeditor of (with TJ Demos and Emily Eliza Scott) of Routledge Companion to Contemporary Art, Visual Culture and Climate Change, Subhankar most recently served as the director and cocurator (with Dr. Jennifer Garcia Peacock) of “a Library, a Classroom, and the World,” an award-winning project for the 2022 Venice Biennale art exhibition Personal Structures organized by the European Cultural Centre in Venice, Italy. His photographs have been exhibited widely, including the 18th Biennale of Sydney, Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, Princeton University Art Museum, Nottingham Contemporary, and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art. He has received a number of awards, including an inaugural Greenleaf Artist Award from the United Nations Environment Programme, a Cultural Freedom Award and a Cultural Freedom Fellowship from Lannan Foundation, a National Conservation Achievement Award from the National Wildlife Federation, and an inaugural Ovation Award and the Globally-Engaged Research Award from the University of New Mexico. Subhankar is currently working on four books on biodiversity: Shorebirds in Modern Times; Coexistence: Biodiversity in New Mexico (editor); a book on Sundarban, the largest mangrove forest on earth, which is situated on the largest river delta, Bengal Delta, which spans costal Bangladesh and West Bengal, India; and a book on the global history of biodiversity and justice (cowriting with Finis Dunaway).

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Community Speaker Series

Sharing knowledge is one of the ways Trent University gives back to our host communities and provides life long learning experiences to alumni. Each year, Trent offers open lectures featuring visiting faculty and experts, sharing ideas on subjects such as the Environment, Gender & Women's Studies, Business & Society, Chemistry, Cultural Studies, and Indigenous Studies. These talks are free and open to the Trent and broader communities. These lectures are made possible thanks to generous donor support.

Learn more here. 

Contact Info

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