Breath(e) Toward Climate and Social Justice

The Hammer Museum is pleased to announce Breath(e): Toward Climate and Social Justice, a groundbreaking exhibition that centers environmental art practices addressing the climate crisis and anthropogenic disasters, and their inescapable intersection with issues of equity and social justice. Part of Getty’s region-wide initiative PST ART: Art & Science Collide, Breath(e) is curated by artist Glenn Kaino and guest curator Mika Yoshitake and features more than 100 artworks by 25 international artists. The sprawling exhibition will fill the majority of the Hammer’s galleries and outdoor spaces, and includes specially commissioned works by Mel Chin, Ron Finley, Cannupa Hanska Luger, Garnett Puett, and Lan Tuazon. The exhibition will be on view at the Hammer from September 14, 2024, through January 5, 2025, and is presented in partnership with Conservation International.  

Hammer Museum director Ann Philbin said, “When I first began talking with Glenn Kaino and Mika Yoshitake about an exhibition that would respond to the climate crisis, it was 2020—at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the racial reckoning in the United States in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. Both the metaphorical and the literal practice of breathing—the right to breathe—was at the top of our minds. Breath(e) poignantly and intelligently spotlights the work of artists who address the urgent concerns of climate and social justice.” 

Breath(e) spotlights 25 intergenerational and transdisciplinary artists whose practices encompass photography, multimedia, augmented reality, painting, living organisms, and more. The exhibition seeks to address the existential dangers posed by the climate crisis and to advocate for a nonhierarchical worldview influenced by ancestral indigenous knowledge, which envisions all elements of nature as one family rather than as materials for use and exploitation by humankind.