Contemporary Art and Culture
Yuko Oda’s recent exhibit, Decaying into Bloom, currently on view at the Brodigan Gallery at the Groton School, located west of Boston, seduces with beauty and delivers a gut-punch from the moment you enter. It is the best kind of artistic experience: being pulled in by the sensuality of the materials, then hit hard with the poignancy of the message. Living things have always had to adapt to new conditions, and Oda imagines for us some ingenious possibilities.
Curator Martina Tanga had been reflecting on the ideas behind Learning With Trees – Artists for Climate and Environmental Solutions long before the exhibition took shape. In 2022, she read Ben Rawlence’s The Treeline, a book tracing how the Boreal forest is shifting under the impact of climate change. That reading sparked the idea that trees could serve as a highly accessible and disarmingly effective way to approach conversations about climate change.