A second edition of As Above, So Below will be part of the exhibition 'This Rare Earth - Stories From Below' at the Artefact festival in Leuven, Belgium. Commissioned for the show, the setup shows a series of pictures explaining the process of 'mining' stardust and entailed a new effort to use meteorites as a resource. Gaining knowledge about the diversity and complexity of the material, the result is once again shown as one cubic centimeter of rare earth metal from space.
About the exhibition
This Rare Earth — Stories from Below directs our gaze down to our feet, to the geological materials that lie beneath the earth’s surface. The exhibition and festival give voice to the stories told by these geological materials, conflict minerals and metals, and rare earth elements. The artworks involved focus on the political, economic and ecological implications of their circulation; from mining, processing, and trading, to use, and recycling. And they reconnect the elements of the earth with their cosmic origins: ‘as above, so below’.
Specific attention goes out to artist practices going beyond critical reporting, towards an embedded, involved way of relating to the geological turn. They shed light on otherwise invisible themes, create new narratives, or offer alternative concepts that can help us in creating a different understanding of our perspective on the fundamental connection between man and mineral, and between body, earth, and cosmos.
With works by Otobong Nkanga (NG), Ilana Halperin (US), Julian Charrière (CH), Justin Bennett (UK), Cecilia Jonsson (SE), Prabhakar Pachpute (IN) & Rupali Patil (IN), Maarten Vanden Eynde (BE), Unknown Fields (AU/UK), Füsun Türetken (TR), Lise Autogena (DK) & Joshua Portway (UK), Susanne Kriemann (DE), Lara Almarcegui (ES), Sissel Marie Tonn (DK), Milo Rau (CH), Ursula Biemann (CH) & Mo Diener (CH), Egill Sæbjörnsson (IS), Kirstie van Noort (NL) & Xandra van der Eijk (NL)
Curators
Karen Verschooren & Ils Huygens (Z33)
The exhibition runs from 13 February until 1 March.
More info on the website of Artefact
