The Climate Crisis Stage: “Staged” Exhibition Meets the Audience

Arkas Art Alacati welcomes the new season with a powerful exhibition that raises awareness about the climate crisis. The Staged exhibition, addressing humanity’s role as both the cause and the victim of the climate crisis, and its prevailing indifference, will present 86 works by 35 artists to art enthusiasts from May 29, 2025, to January 4, 2026 in Alaçatı, Turkey.

Arkas Art Alacati opens this season with an interdisciplinary exhibition focused on one of humanity’s most concerning issues: the climate crisis. Curated by Billur Tansel, the exhibition titled Staged explores, through art, the existential dilemmas of humanity, which is disconnected from nature and seeking refuge in self-created artificial realities.

This comprehensive project offers a space for confrontation through art, inviting viewers not only to experience aesthetics but also to reflect, question, and take action.

Theatrical Copies That Have Replaced Nature
At the heart of the exhibition lies the reality that humanity is both the perpetrator and the victim of the climate crisis it has created. Despite years of warnings from scientists, humanity continues to behave like a passive spectator in the face of natural disasters.

The exhibition opens a philosophical discussion on the background of this indifference and how the perception of reality is manipulated. Arthur Schopenhauer’s reflections on the subjective nature of reality and Jean Baudrillard’s simulation theory provide the intellectual backbone of the exhibition.

In the Footsteps of Piero Gilardi: An Artistic Stand Against Artificial Nature
The exhibition draws inspiration from Piero Gilardi, a pioneer of the Arte Povera movement and an ecological activist. As early as the 1960s, Gilardi anticipated the destruction of nature and created works that served as warnings. He is best known for his Tappeto-Natura (Nature Carpets) series, made using materials such as polyurethane. Foreseeing a dystopian world where humanity would experience its longing for nature merely as a decorative element through artificial landscapes, the artist is featured in the exhibition with his work The Cherry Flower, made from polyurethane and sponge materials.

The exhibition also includes a documentary video entitled Gilardi: Tappeto-Natura, produced by Domenico Palma for Gilardi’s retrospective exhibition curated by Elena Re at the Magazzino Italian Art Museum in 2022. The video will take part in the exhibition “Staged” with the courtesy of Magazzino Italian Art Museum, Cold Spring NY, USA.