Art and Climate Change collects a wide range of artistic responses to our current ecological emergency. When the future of life on Earth is threatened, creative production for its own sake is not enough. Through contemporary artworks, artists are calling for an active, collective engagement with the planet in order to illuminate some of the structures that threaten biological survival.

Exploring the meeting point of decolonial reparation and ecological restoration, artists are remaking history by drawing on the latest ecological theories, scientific achievements, and indigenous worldviews to engage with the climate crisis. Across five chapters, authors Maja and Reuben Fowkes examine these artworks that respond to the Anthropocene and its detrimental impact on the planet's climate, from scenes of nature decimated by ongoing extinction events and landscapes turned to waste by extraction, to art coming out of the communities most affected by the environmental injustice of climate change.

Featuring a broad range of media, including painting, photography, conceptual, installation, and performance, this text also dives into eco-conscious art practices that have created a new kind of artistic community by stressing a common mission for creators all over the world. In this art history, the authors emphasize the importance of caring for and listening to marginalized and indigenous communities while addressing climate uncertainty, deforestation, toxicity, and species extinction. By proposing scenarios for sustainable futures, today's artists are reshaping our planet's history, as documented in this heavily illustrated book.

About the Authors

Curators and art historians Dr. Maja Fowkes and Dr. Reuben Fowkes are co-directors of Postsocialist Art Centre (PACT) at the Institute of Advanced Studies, University College London, and co-founders of the Translocal Institute for Contemporary Art, a research centre in Budapest that operates at the intersection between ecological thought and contemporary art.

They are co-founders of the Environmental Arts and Humanities Initiative at Central European University and have curated contemporary art and ecology programmes for the Institute of Advanced Studies research streams on Turbulence and Waste (2019-20). They are the authors of several books, including Central and Eastern European Art Since 1950, also in the World of Art series.