Uriel Orlow. Forest Futurism

For his show in the MCBA Espace Projet venue, Uriel Orlow is presenting a series of new works from a research project begun in Bolzano (Italy) which takes fossilised trees as its main subjects, in order to explore the extended time of climate change.

Uriel Orlow (b. 1973 in Zurich; lives and works between Lisbon, London and Zurich) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice is based on research and centred on processes. That is, his films, lectures, and multimedia installations emphasise places and specific micro-histories by combining different types of images and narrative modes. The artist’s work addresses the remains of colonialism, the spatial manifestations of memory, always anchoring his concerns in the material history of the objects themselves, whether it’s plants, language, or written records. As Ana Teixeira Pinto puts it in connection with one of Orlow’s latest works, shown at the 2022 Berlin Biennial, ‘Orlow focuses his attention on the entanglements of human and nonhuman actors in order to read the archive against the grain and to consider what a restitution of the natural world means.’ His long-term practice resonates more than ever with contemporary issues, be they the blind spots of our colonial heritage or our relationship to the natural world.

Uriel Orlow studied in London at the Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, the Slade School of Art, and University College London, completing a PhD in Fine Arts in 2002. He was awarded the Swiss Grand Prix Art /Prix Meret Oppenheim in 2023. He was the recipient of the Sharjah Biennial Prize in 2017. He has also earned the 2015 Price from the City of Zurich, and three Swiss Art Awards (2008, 2009, 2012).

Curator of the exhibition: Nicole Schweizer, curator of contemporary art, MCBA