Reconciliation
with the Living

About the Exhibition

“We cannot address these ecological issues without the arts. If you don’t have the emotions capable of metabolizing the ecological situation, you’re done for!”

“Reconciliation with the Living” is a traveling digital art exhibition organized by Culture For Causes Network with the support of UNESCO. It brings together artists who work with the living and biodiversity, and whose works — whether they state it or not — belong to a green artivism that energizes the environmental cause.

It opens at UNESCO headquarters in Paris on November 25 and 26, 2022, during the University of the Earth: an international selection from more than thirteen countries, presented on large 4K screens, ranging from digitized oil painting to generative art and the tradition of fight posters. A virtual gallery extends the exhibition into the dematerialized space, and a roundtable, “NFT & Environment,” questions the real footprint of blockchain.

The exhibition also aims to name a movement that already existed: the hashtag #Artists4theLiving gathers the artistic initiatives that claim it. It takes seriously a scene — that of crypto-art — which its proximity to finance unfairly casts suspicion on: these are artists who speak to the world and want to make a living from their work.

Since then, she has traveled to the Aria Art Gallery in Florence for Art For Tomorrow, to Arroz Estúdios in Lisbon in partnership with the NFT Biennale, and to the Arts DAO Fest in Dubai in collaboration with Polkadot — bringing her 23 artists and 34 works into new institutional and festival contexts.

Credits
Exhibition author: Benjamin Benita. Selection of works: Benjamin Benita and Matthieu Chéreau. Scenography: Benjamin Benita, with the help of Nora Reddani. Graphic design of the exhibition and guide: Clara Delboé. Organization made possible by the support of the Polkadot project, with Verse and Lemonade.