Bending the Curve (working title)

We can give our ecosystems a respite. This is the optimistic message the Frankfurter Kunstverein and the Senckenberg Research Institute want to broadly convey with their joint exhibition project “Bending the Curve”. The project’s name refers to the model study “Bending the Curve of Terrestrial Biodiversity” by the climate researcher David Leclère. The study proposes an extensive package of measures which include restructuring the global agricultural and food production system in an environmentally friendly way, which in turn could spur an increase in biodiversity by 2050. All that would be required, however, is complete social and societal reorientation.

This is the starting point of the Frankfurt exhibition, in which Leclère is also involved in an advisory capacity. In a cross-disciplinary collaboration between contemporary artists and research institutes, the project aims to present and artistically express possible courses of action that civil society can take. The exhibition will be staged at the Frankfurter Kunstverein and curated by its director and the director of the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre. An interdisciplinary exhibition tour will be created using scientific specimens from the Senckenberg collections, contemporary artworks, multimedia installations and design applications. The exhibition will also include examples of sustainable architecture, works that highlight the attitudes of non-Western cultures toward nature, and participative citizen science projects. The aim is to make current scientific findings and models, and our complex relationship to biodiversity more tangible through artistic means and image-rendering processes.

Artistic director: Franziska Nori
Curator: Katrin Böhning-Gaese
Research advisor: David Leclère

Exhibition: Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt am Main: 6 Oct. 2023 – 4 Feb. 2024