Exhibition backgrounds

From November 10, 2017 to March 29, 2018, the LIB at the Museum der Natur Hamburg - Zoologie will present the special exhibition "Vanishing Legacies: The World as Forest." For this period, audiovisual installations, photographs, films and sculptures by contemporary artists will transform the exhibition hall into the endangered forest habitat.

The forest is a myth. Sung about and gilded by artists of all times and regions. It is a place of longing, a living environment and a resource. For European naturalists of the 19th century, it was also a place of knowledge. But what does the (rain)forest look like today? How has man changed this ideal habitat of so many animals and plants according to his needs, through European colonialism and ...

Vanishing Legacies: The World as Forest presents artistic works by Maria Thereza Alves, Ursula Biemann, Bik Van der Pol, Shannon Lee Castleman, Revital Cohen & Tuur van Balen, Mark Dion, Radjawali Irendra / Akademi Drone Indonesia, Armin Linke with Giulia Bruno and Giuseppe Ielasi, Barbara Marcel, Julian Oliver & Crystelle Vũ, Robert Zhao Renhui / The Institute of Critical Zoologists, SHIMURAbros and autonoma / Paulo Tavares.

The exhibition "Vanishing Legacies: The World as Forest" combines contemporary art with historical documents and selected collection objects from tropical regions. The collection piece of a Sumatran rhinoceros skull from the LIB exemplifies an image of nature in the tension between scientific knowledge and medial de-naturalization. As an animated, colorized CT scan, the skull serves science ...