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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Lifestyle
Natalie Hanman

Himalayan tree-huggers and a landscape of vulvas: the eco-show where women call the shots

‘Empowerment in the face of destruction’ … Chipko Tree Huggers of the Himalayas #4, 1994, by Pamela Singh.
‘Empowerment in the face of destruction’ … Chipko Tree Huggers of the Himalayas #4, 1994, by Pamela Singh. Photograph: © Pamela Singh Courtesy of sepiaEYE

There are photographs of women with their arms wrapped around the trunks of trees in the Himalayas to prevent them from being felled. There are aerial, yet intimate, pictures of open-pit mines and dams that have been blasted across the landscape in western Australia. There are films shot underwater, in warming seas, of melting ice and damaged coral reefs. But “this isn’t a show about climate change”, insists curator Alona Pardo.

The Barbican’s new exhibition, Re/Sisters: A Lens on Gender and Ecology, brings together 250 works of photography, film, performance art and installation, created since the late 1960s by nearly 50 women and gender non-conforming artists from across the world.

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