Alongside the framework of a progressively endangered planet, eco-art gains a novel significance. The artists working in this area center on the recognition that the world has entered the ‘Anthropocene’ era. Anthropocentrism literally means human-centered, but in its most relevant philosophical form it is the ethical belief that humans alone possess intrinsic value. This is obvious by the impact and effect of human commotion on the planet earth.

Functioning in a variety of approaches, vacillating from critique to practical demonstrations and shading into other current tendencies like social practice and environmental activism eco artists express hope that art can point the way to a more ecologically sustainable future. In recent years, the impending threat of various environmental crises has grown ever more evident world-wide. There is an increasing sense of urgency within multiple realms of visual culture, including art exhibitions, documentary photography and video installations and socially engaged art as part of social movements over ecological matters and concerns.

During the Fall period of 2023, the Foam Museum in Amsterdam showcased How to Love a Tree: Wild Encounters in the Foam 3h exhibition space, a showing by Pakistani artist and film maker Hira Nabi. Nabi works with moving imagery to articulate the myths of our everyday. She surveys the numerous components and rudiments of our present-day veracity with intuitiveness and awareness. Her practice is concerned with mediations on the environment, the often unseen, and a slow process of re-earthing. Her imagery enlists the ritual of using descriptions of the land as a mirror to reflect our cultural attitudes towards nature, and our sense of the geography of memory and identity; perhaps even our desire to embrace the narrative of nature as an expression of the sublime.

How to Love a Tree is an ongoing project that began in 2019. It is set in the towns and neighboring forests of Murree and the Galyat—former colonial hill stations—in Pakistan. When the British took control of Punjab, Hazara and Kashmir, they laid the foundation of Murree, building churches, chapels, residential quarters, military cantonments and schools. Murree befits its role as the summer capital of the Punjab province until 1864, and its beautiful position as well as its relatively cooler climate makes it clear why it was such a popular location, particular for the British living in India.  Forest landscapes were then shaped to fulfill the colonisers’ wistful yearnings, transplanting their hometown English countryside landscapes and transforming local geographies, wiping out traces of what existed before.

Nabi’s ongoing research is an attempt to set in motion a reflection upon colonial relics. These colonialist locations are currently popular holiday destinations for the locals. Throughout her investigation Nabi looks into this recent acclimatization of forests for the existing human-centric requirements. Her perceptions are profoundly motivated by the momentous historical and cultural frameworks of South Asia, especially the traces of British colonial rule. Nabi’s South Asian background and her close association with the land greatly enlightens her awareness of interrelated human-nature dynamics, notably embodied in her art. Nabi’s interest in forests and trees is natural considering her time spent in former colonial stations, mainly in Pakistan. The work draws from her close encounter with the landscape and her efforts to recognize and elucidate suggestions of colonial remains.

The venture embraces different forms of media including moving images, cyanotypes, rubbings, text and sound. Produced through diverse chapters, each one becomes part of a larger narrative. This continuing project looks at notions of identity linked to the territory, as well as theoretical research on the aesthetics of perpetual movement. In Nabi’s first official display in the Netherlands, she bestows diverse segments of this endeavor. Wild Encounters (2023) is a three-channel expanded video projection and maps out the impermanence of the forest inviting viewers into the space.¹ The exhibited work sheds light on the complexity of mankind’s interactions with nature and reminds the viewer of their agency to preserve the environment. She demonstrates that the chronicles of history and the environment are profoundly entangled, persuaded by repetitions of control and disregard.

Nabi’s project surveys the multifaceted associations between exploitation, antiquity, and individuality. The different sections of the study highlight colonial influences and geographical changes with their lasting consequences. The artist’s work is created through her involvement with the environment situated in her home country, Pakistan. Her research is a ceaseless expedition into the disappearing of an ecological community that is lush in flora and fauna. Her focus is on making visible remnants of this painful past in what are now tourist destinations in the hills. Nabi’s poetic video installation underscores the deep intertwining of human narratives with the environments they inhabit. Through her work she transports memories of the neglected views and disregarded voices of the landscape, as well as the troubled yet crucial affiliation between mankind and the forest.

On entering the space, the feeling of being immersed in a forest of stoic trees is overpowering and mesmerizing. There is a monumental shift in emphasis from traditional two-dimensional images. Instead, the site-specific video installation comprises a mystical presence of trees and sounds which resolutely envelopes the spectator. This is predominantly captivating and stimulating. It emotionally moves, and challenges, the onlooker through layered nuances of discernment. Her three-channel video projection is a reflection of love— its manifestation: an offering, a gesture of generosity. Immersed, the viewer enters a meditative trance-like state. How do we breathe with the forest? How do we dream with the forest? Nabi invokes Etel Adnan in asking us to meditate on “time’s other side.” How can it be measured? How can it be reached and breathed?² Interacting with the multi-sensory space awakens the wisdoms and the spirit, along with uncertainty of time.

Nabi’s work challenges the traditional anthropocentric views that have dominated the global stage. Anthropocentrism argues that human beings are the most significant entities in the world, a belief embedded in many Western philosophies and art. This philosophical viewpoint reputes humans as separate from, and superior to, nature while other entities (including animals, plants, mineral resources) are resources that may be misused and abused for the benefit of humankind. In South Asia, colonial influences magnified anthropocentrism, often stressing human progress at nature’s expense. In her work, Nabi hopes to recover the languages of nature and to find ways to bring herself and other into closer contact with worlds most of us have long distanced ourselves from.³  Within the exhibition space the spectators’ acumen awakens to the likelihood of their involvement in the forest as a form of imaginative symbiosis, where the human is decentered.

How to Love a Tree: Wild Encounters was exhibited at the Foam Museum, Amsterdam from 22^nd September 2023- 26^th November 2023.

Title Image: How to Love a Tree – Wild Encounters, 2023 © Foam. Photo: Christian van der Kooy.

References:

Maleuvre, Didier. Museum Memories: History, Technology, Art, Standford University Press, 1999.

Demos, T.J. Decolonizing Nature: Contemporary Art and the Politics of Ecology, Sternberg Press, 2016.

Heartney, Eleanor. Art for the Anthropocene Era, https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/features/art-for-the-anthropocene-era-63001/, Art in America, Accessed 30^th January 2024.

Hornborg, Alf. Colonialism in the Anthropocene: the political ecology of the money-energy-technology complex,  Elgar Online, Volume 10, Issue 1, 2019.

Boslaugh, Sara. https://www.britannica.com/topic/anthropocentrism, Human Centered Philosophy and Ethics, Accessed 2^nd 30^th January 2024.

Foam 3h: Hira Nabi – How to Love a Tree: Wild Encounters, Press Release, September 2023.

Lempesis, Dimitris. PHOTO: Hira Nabi-How to Love a Tree, Wild Encounters, https://www.dreamideamachine.com/?p=91420, Accessed 30^th January 2024.