Climate Quilt- The Perspective of an Eco-Feminist on Interconnectedness

By MJ Golberg

When we see the earth as part of us, we are less inclined to harm it. The relationships between identity, humans, and nature are fluid- and through understanding this, we can start to make changes for the environment. Art is a tool that brings awareness through topics of interconnectedness, eco-feminism, intersectionality, and bioregionalism. Intersectional Eco-Feminism exemplifies Rifkin’s ideas of resilience in this epoch, as we define the strength between being multifaceted beings. This square within a patchwork quilt further defines the correlations of these topics, each an individual that is necessary to a larger whole. When thinking about interconnectedness and intersectionality, we realize that no single topic is exclusive and there are connections to be made through each issue. Further analysis can be made when thinking about textile work, stereotypically thought to be a domestic role completed by women. The stereotypes of the feminine is to be nurturing, sensual, vulnerable, submissive, empathetic, and compassionate, whereas ideas of masculinity are thought of being strong, logical, aggressive, and competitive. (Weichselbaumer 163) When we integrate these ideas of the masculine and feminine together, we find androgyne views of balance, resilience, and a symbiotic presence. Eco-feminism is not to neglect the masculine side of us, but to balance and make aware of the strong feminine energy that can help heal the world. The square represents the feelings I have from being connected to the earth in aim to raise awareness for healing, developing the connections of memories within the landscape. (Figure 1) This is part of a project that aims to address our own aesthetics of the Anthropocene, our resilience, and to present our voice in Climate Change.

[Figure 1]

MJ Golberg, Identity and Nature, 2023. Reused Fabric waste. (14” x 14”) Seattle, WA.

When fighting for injustices among people, you start to see a parallel in how the earth has been neglected. In the 1960’s and 70’s, the second wave feminism and the environmental movement saw a co-emergence in the US, with many artists witnessing similarities between the exploitation of the earth and the exploitation of women by patriarchy. These movements formed the creation of eco-feminism. (Hale, 112) Amal Kenaway displays these societal pressures and life-imposed restrictions through her work The Room. (Figure 2) The stop motion video depicts what is present beyond the physicality of the individual through images of a withering tree that morphs into a beating heart, juxtaposed with a scene of the artist preparing a wedding gown. While Ithell Colquhoun believed, “The divine feminine is essential to the redemption of humanity,” she also believed both male and female energies were present in the earth. (Hale, 112) This is proven in her work, Untitled, (Figure 3) and Tree Anatomy, (Figure 4) as the natural features of the land and tree depicts the body of women. Using surrealism to depict landscape as bodies creates a fluidity between the feminine and masculine traits in her work, finding balance between the two. Surrealism is a form of art that can help viewers see similarities between objects, a perfect tool for interconnectedness and the androgyne. Creating positive associations between body and land, Hale’s essay notes mythical perceptions of woman as occultist in duality with terms such as “Mother Nature”, a feminine and spiritual idea. [Figure 2]

Amal Kenawy. The Room, 2004. Single-channel video stills. 11' 12''. Courtesy of the Amal Kenawy Estate and Darat al Funun – The Khalid Shoman Foundation.

[Figure 3]

Ithell Colquhoun, Untitled. N.d. Painting. Radical Landscapes: Art, Identity and Activism. Tate Gallery Liverpool, UK.

[Figure 4]

Ithell Colquhoun, tree anatomy, 1942. Oil on Panel. Sotheby’s, studio sale, 24 April 1985, lot 521. Pruskin Gallery, London. Private collection, Leeds.

Associations of women with nature have been previously characterized as wild, untamable, and primitive. With references that date back to Eve, this idea has been linked to the femme fetale. (Friedrichsmeyer, 65-66) The artist who claimed their independence and connection with the earth experienced labels of paganism or occultism, deciding that if a woman was close to nature, they would be evil and unpure. By this assumption, it limits the control you have over the male gaze, creating a divide between ideas of feminism and domesticity. Carolee Schneemann is a feminist artist that challenged these notions, painting her own space and time. In Meat Joy (Figure 5), she created a performance that tackles sex, sensuality, and love in a shopping list. Participants lay with “raw fish, chickens, sausages, wet paint, plastic, rope and shredded scrap paper”, ingredients for cooking, craft, or so-called women’s work. With this performance, she tested the male gaze with ideas of pleasure, putting herself in the femme fatale role to challenge the capitalistic and patriarchal society. Resisting being called a performance artist, Schneemann considers herself to be a painter, “using her body to reject performative womanhood with its desire for pristine, immaculate sex.” (Snow) By painting her own reality as an eco-feminist, she stiches the threads of her image together in the way she wants to be seen.

[Figure 5]

Carolee Schneemann, Meat Joy. 1964. Gelatin Print. A photograph by Tony Ray-Jones, taken at a Performance art piece or happening by Carolee Schneeman, performed in Judson Memorial Church in November 1964.

We can use notions of the feminine to connect to ideas to the land and identity. With Rifkin’s ideas of resilience in The Age of Resilience, he mentions bioregionalism and attachment to place on how it “largely determines one’s worldview and narrative of how we live our lives.” (Rifkin, 192) We have been taught ideas of belonging as nationality and culture as an essential part of society. The challenge arises if we change our perspective as belonging to the land, rather than it belonging to us, we can change our relationship with it. Rifkin also quotes in the text, “The point of the earth’s species and ecosystem do not stop at the edge of our bodies but rather continuously flow in and out of our bodies.” (Rifkin, 5) These ideas are aligned with interconnectedness and indigenous beliefs, continuing the surrealist perspective of artist such as Ithell Colquhoun in Figure 3. Robin Wall Kimmerer, asks, in Braiding Sweetgrass, “What happens when we truly become native to a place, when we finally make a home?” When we build our identity from the space we are in, we therefore see the earth as an intersection of our spiritual and physical being.

Sewing the fabric of nature with our soul can also be spiritual. Ana Mendieta merged her body with natural elements such as mud, blood, fire, earth, and water, in her Silhueta Series: Arbol de la Vida (Tree of Life) (1976). She calls her self-portraits, Silhueta, or "earth-bodies”, as the tree of life is symbolic of the Mayan or Mesoamerican Tree of Life cosmologies that connect the heavens, earth, and underworld. (Jones 54) She uses materials like mud (Figure 6) from the earth as a thread of a rooted and connected system, such as a thread in a quilt. Kiki Smith depicts ideas of gender politics, spirituality, identity, through nature and fables. The lithograph, Born, (Figure 7) depicts a twist of the fable, Little Red Riding Hood, as the wolf gives birth to the grandmother rather than eating her. In similarity, Born (Figure 8), a bronze statue depicts a doe giving birth to a grown woman in an idealized, classical way. Roman Mythology and Native American cultures influence this work, resembling our interconnected relationship to the natural world. These works show the interconnectedness between human and nature, through the doe giving birth to the human and the wolf giving birth to the grandmother.

[Figure 6]

Ana Mendieta, Árbol de la Vida (Tree of Life), 1976. Photograph. © 2022 The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co. / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

[Figure 7]

Kiki Smith, Born, 2002. Lithograph, 68 x 56 in. (172.7 x 142.2 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Emily Winthrop Miles Fund, 2003.17. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 2003.17.jpg)

[Figure 8]

Kiki Smith, Born, 2002. Bronze. Collection Buffalo AKG Art Museum. Buffalo, New York.

When understanding the power of the earth, we must look at other cultures, gender, and beliefs to perceive our existence on a deeper level. Bell Hooks writes about Allison Saar’s work in Art On My Mind,

Just as the white female in racist sexist iconography most often symbolizes innocence and virtue, the absence of sexual passion; the black female body is usually marked as the opposite. Many of the naked black female bodies pictured in Saar's work assume seductive poses, their bodies open for entry. As "sweet thangs," black females must use sexuality as a means to survive. Saar suggests that there is integrity in this choice. For example, Saar's sculpture Cleoposits that female longing can be positioned as worthy even as the female remains sexual, driven by passion. Clearly, Saar depicts Salome as a woman driven by unrequited longing to destroy the object of her affection and desire. (Hooks 14)

We must note the differences of the gaze, and stereotypes when representing the earth as our body. Leah Thomas gives solutions to dismantling systems of oppression in the Intersectional Environmentalist. When defining intersectional environmentalism, she notes the social and environmental justice are intertwined, and when you neglect one issue you are neglecting the other. (Thomas 31) This notes back to the quilt metaphor, when thinking of each issue as a square, or part of the quilt.

The topics of eco-feminism, bioregionalism, and environmental justice are all interconnected, just as a quilt is made of squares. This is also connected to issues that others in the group brought up. Non-human animal life is connected to the topics of Blast fishing, and harm that is done through blast fishing is interconnected within cultures as some indigenous people are dependent on salmon for food. Raising awareness of eco-feminism aims to heal the connections between non-animate and animate spirits, as our identity is fluid with nature. Kiki Smith, Ithell Colquhoun, Ana Mendieta, and other artist mentioned above are those who depict fluid ideas about nature and identity. The Aesthetics of the Anthropocene don’t define a strict solution for raising awareness of the epoch we are in, but it does define the ability for resilience and unity.

Works Cited:

Burkhardt, Delara. “The Impact of Textile Production and Waste on the Environment

(Infographics): News: European Parliament.” The Impact of Textile Production and Waste on the Environment (Infographics) | News | European Parliament, S&D, Germany, 15 Nov. 2023, https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/20201208STO93327/the-impact-of-textile-production-and-waste-on-the-environment-infographics#:~:text=Textile%20production%20is%20estimated%20to,microplastics%20released%20into%20the%20environment. 

Carlassare, Elizabeth. 1994. "Destabilizing the Criticism of Essentialism in Ecofeminist

Discourse." Capitalism, Nature, Socialism 5.3 (September): 50-66.

Flaherty, M. (2022). On Not Becoming an Ecosexual: The Questions of Animism. Virginia

Quarterly Review, 98(4), 128-137.

Fowkes, Maja, and Reuben Fowkes. Art and Climate Change. Thames & Hudson, 2022.

Friedman, Vanessa. “The Future Is Trashion.” The New York Times, December 20, 2019.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/20/style/zero-waste-daniel-trashion.html.

Friedrichsmeyer, Sara. “The Subversive Androgyne.” Women in German Yearbook, vol. 3, 1987, pp.

63–75. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20688686. Accessed 11 Dec. 2023)

Hale, Amy. “The Earth is a Woman and She Will Rise” in Radical Landscapes: Art, Identity

and Activism, edited by Darren Pih. Tate Publishing, 2022. (112-118)

Heitzer, Anja, Johan Holten, and Sebastian Schneider. “Aesthetic of the Anthropocene by Eva

Horn.” Essay. In 1.5 Degrees: Interdependencies between Life, the Cosmos, and Technology. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2023. 

hooks, bell. Art on My Mind: Visual Politics. New Press, 1995. 14-19.

Jones, Jessica E. "Earth-Bodies as Re-Existence: Ana Mendieta's Siluetas Beyond the Limits of Ecofeminism." Feminist Formations, vol. 34 no. 3, 2022, p. 33-60. Project MUSE, https://doi.org/10.1353/ff.2022.0034.

----“Kiki Smith, Born 2002.” Edited by Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Born | Buffalo AKG Art Museum, buffaloakg.org/artworks/20022-born. Accessed 11 Dec. 2023. 

Kimmerer, Robin Wall. “In the Footsteps of Nanabozho: Becoming Indigenous to Place.” Book Club Kit. Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, Milkweed Editions, Minneapolis, MN, 2013, pp. 207.

Koskentola, Kristiina, and Marjolein Van der Loo. Enfleshed : Ecologies of Entities and

Beings. First edition, April 2023., Onomatopee Projects, 2023.

Weichselbaumer, Doris. “Is It Sex or Personality? The Impact of Sex Stereotypes on Discrimination in

Applicant Selection.” Eastern Economic Journal, vol. 30, no. 2, 2004, pp. 159–86. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40326127. Accessed 11 Dec. 2023.

Reiss, Julie. "Art and climate change." Grove Art Online. September 10, 2021. Oxford University Press. Date of access 11 Dec. 2023, https://www.oxfordartonline.com/groveart/view/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.001.0001/oao-9781884446054-e-90000369384

Rifkin, Jeremy. The age of resilience: Reimagining existence on a Rewilding Earth. New York,

NY: St. Martin’s Press, an imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group, 2022. 2-192.

Rockeman, Olivia and Liu, Coco. “Dyeing Clothes Uses Lots of Fossil Fuel. Startups Are Vying

to Fix That.” Los Angeles Times, August 18, 2023. https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-08-18/clothing-dye-fossil-fuel-carbon-dioxide#:~:text=Textile%20production%20as%20a%20whole,than%20shipping%20and%20aviation%20combined.&text=A%202021%20report%20from%20the,from%20textile%20manufacturing%20by%2013%25. 

Pih, Darren, et al. Radical Landscapes : Art, Identity and Activism. Tate Publishing, 2022.

Sethi, Anita. “Routes and Roots” in Radical Landscapes: Art, Identity and Activism, edited by

Darren Pih. Tate Publishing, 2022. (94-98)

Snow, Philippa. “Raw Meat, Live Sex and Snakes: The Dangerous Art of Carolee Schneemann.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 15 Dec. 2015, www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/dec/15/carolee-schneemann-kim-kardashian-raw-meat-live-sex-snakes-gorgeous-dangerous-art. 

Thomas, Leah. The Intersectional Environmentalist: How to Dismantle Systems of Oppression to Protect People + Planet. Voracious, 2022.