Can art save the earth? Artists share how their work strives to do just that

CNBC

2 days ago

Politics, science and the law aren't the only fields with the ability to influence climate change policy — when it comes to making direct interventions, art shouldn't be underestimated, industry insiders say.
The arts have an "essential" role to play in shaping environmental governance, according to the organization overseeing the arts program at the United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC), which starts on June 9, in Nice, France.
According to Markus Reymann, co-director of contemporary art and advocacy foundation TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, art and culture can "rekindle relationships" with the environment and those who inhabit it.
At UNOC, TBA21 will oversee about 20 activities, including exhibitions, workshops and panel discussions, to raise awareness of and engagement with the ocean around the topics of regenerative practices and sustainability. The initiatives "assert the vital role of culture and arts in high-level political decision-making," according to an emailed statement.
The exhibition "Becoming Ocean: a social conversation about the Ocean," is part of UNOC and features work from more than 20 artists, "exploring the main challenges facing the Ocean," according to TBA21's website.
"[Art] can nurture and foster [the] care and the agency that we've now externalized to experts — the scientists are going to take care of this, politicians will take care of this … and so we [feel we] have nothing to do but consume and make money to be able to consume. And I think art can break that open," Reymann told CNBC in a video call.
It's a theme that artist Maja Petric relates to.
Her light installations, or "sculptures," aim to evoke what people feel when they experience pristine nature, she told CNBC by video call. When asked whether her work can influence climate policy, she said in an email: "As an artist, I don't speak in metrics or policy. But there is evidence: it's in every person who lingers with the piece, sometimes for minutes, sometimes for hours."
In May, Petric won an innovation prize for her work "Specimens of Time, Hoh Rain Forest, 2025," as part of the Digital Art Awards put on by gallery The House of Fine Art and auction house Phillips.
The sculpture appears in the form of a glass cube, which glows with light that changes color based on live temperature data taken from the Hoh Rain Forest in near Seattle, Washington State. "The idea is: what if … none of those landscapes exist in the future, but how will we think of them?" Petric said of her work.
It's not only contemporary art that explores human influence on the natural world.
"Historically, perhaps the greatest contribution artists have made in the context of environmental risk is to remind wider society of what might be lost. From Turner landscapes and Constable skyscapes to Richard Long's walks in the wilds, artists remind us of the preeminence of the natural world," Godfrey Worsdale, director of the Henry Moore Foundation, said in an email to CNBC.
Worsdale also noted the German artist Joseph Beuys' "7000 Oaks" project, for which the artist and his team planted 7,000 oak trees, one of which stands outside the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, England. "It is growing steadily as the modern-day city swirls around it. But as we know, the oak grows slowly and the world is changing ever more quickly," Worsdale said.
Art can be a way of making the climate crisis "easier to comprehend and act upon," according to Lula Rappoport, community coordinator at Gallery Climate Coalition.
"The greatest obstacle to meaningful policy is how abstract and immense climate change can feel," Rappoport told CNBC by email. "Art can bridge this gap by helping us understand challenging concepts and imagining alternative futures," she said. Rappoport cited Ice Watch London, a 2018 project that saw artist Olafur Eliasson bring 24 large ice blocks from an iceberg in Greenland to London, as an example of "how art can literally bring distant concepts close to home."
For artist Ahmet Ogut, art has a "power and agency" that he said doesn't need to wait to be recognized by politicians or scientists.
"Art doesn't need permission, it works in parallel systems, activating new imaginaries, forming temporary communities, and offering tools of resistance," he said in an email to CNBC. Ogut pointed to artist Lauren Bon's "Bending the River," a large-scale project that has diverted water from the Los Angeles River to irrigate public land as an artwork that has intervened "directly in ecological infrastructure," and created "a form of civic reparation."
Ogut's work "Saved by the Whale's Tail (Saved by Art)," which will be launched at Stratford subway station in London on Sept. 10, was "inspired by an incident that occurred near Rotterdam in 2020 when a train overran the tracks and was saved by a sculpture of a whale's tail," according to Transport For London's website.
"Art can help us stop pretending we're separate from the planet," Ogut said. "The future lies not in grand declarations, but in small, consistent solidarities. That's where art begins."
Ogut also advocated for artists to be included early on in projects that tackle climate change, and cited Angel Borrego Cubero and Natalie Jeremijenko's Urban Space Station, which recycles building emissions and grows food indoors, as an example of "how deeply integrated artistic approaches can be."
"We need more collaborations where artists are not brought in to merely "aestheticize" or question, but are involved from the beginning as equal partners," Ogut said.