MAN & MINING

Raw materials and their exploitation are decisive for the future face of our planet. Open-cast mines destroy agricultural land, gold mines poison rivers, burning seams of coal make whole landscapes uninhabitable. During the extraction of rare earths - metals that are important for electromobility - large quantities of radioactive mud are produced, usually in far away countries. A competition for limited resources that requires ever increasing sacrifices from humans and the environment began long ago. The question is: in times of climate change and a turnaround in energy policy, will we continue to ensure our western standard of living for the future, or will we act according to greater global awareness? Right now, we are excavating, extracting, generating new markets for sales and creating geopolitical conditions for lasting global injustice.
The exhibition MAN & MINING has gathered artistic works on traditional as well as Crypto Mining - works which question dependence on worldwide supply chains and reveal causal connections between the demand for raw materials and the destruction of unique ecosystems, taking a position on nature and the people who are involved in mining and its consequences. MAN & MINING presents works of art by Unknown Fields, Danny Franzreb, Johnny Haglund, Pieter Hugo, Lu Guang, Andrea Mancini, Lisa Rave, Sebastião Salgado and Gabriella Torres-Ferrer.