Black Earth Rising: Colonialism and Climate Change in Contemporary Art

by Ekow Eshun, Anna Arabindan-Kesson (Text by), Macarena Gómez-Barris (Text by)

Overview

A vibrant contemporary art anthology that explores the complex ties between race, climate crisis, and colonialism by over 150 leading artists of African diasporic, Latin American, and Native American identity.

Black Earth Rising presents works by artists of African diasporic, Latin American, and Native American identity that address vital questions of land, presence, climate crisis, and social and environmental justice against the historical backdrop of European settlement of the New World. Supported by an exhibition curated by the author, this timely publication invites us to trace and make the connections between race, the climate crisis, and colonialism.

Works by over 150 contemporary artists are presented in three thematic sections: Reckoning, Reimagining, and Reclaiming. Complex and intertwined concepts are explored: forced migration and slavery, the environmental consequences of colonialism, the occupation of Native lands, the urban plight of Black and Brown communities, and how cultural practices and knowledge systems of indigenous peoples can change our perspectives of the natural world.

Compelling and thought-provoking, Black Earth Rising presents a discourse around climate change that situates the voices of people of color at the active center rather than on the passive periphery, and expands our understanding of aesthetic perspectives on climate change through artworks that reach to the poetic and lyrical rather than the didactic.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780500028780
Publisher:	Thames & Hudson
Publication date:	06/03/2025
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	10.00(w) x 12.40(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Ekow Eshun is a writer, curator, journalist, and broadcaster based in London, whose writing has appeared in publications including The New York Times, the Financial Times, The Guardian, and Vogue. Director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, from 2005 to 2010, and a frequent contributor to BBC radio and television programs, his previous books include Black Gold of the Sun: Searching for Home in England and Africa, Africa State of Mind: Contemporary Photography Reimagines a Continent, and In the Black Fantastic.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Black Earth as a Poem
2. I Reckoning
3. Plantation Returns in Contemporary Art by Anna Arabindan-Kesson
4. II Reimagining
5. The Creative Storm of the Otherwise by Macarena Gómez-Barris
6. III Reclaiming
7. Notes
8. Picture Credits
9. Index
10. Acknowledgments
11. About the Authors

Editorial Reviews

"Black Earth Rising examines how the climate crisis and colonialism are intimately connected, through the lens of works by contemporary African diasporic, Latin American, and Native American artists."

Art & Object