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 is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice is research-based and process-oriented. For almost ten years, plants have been a regular focus of his work, both witnesses to and protagonists of specific histories that they enable us to uncover or interpret differently, whether it be the blind spots of our colonial heritage, or our relationship to the natural world. For his show in MCBA’s Project Space, Orlow is presenting a new part of a multifaceted project he began in South Tyrol, in particular a film shot especially for the exhibition that explores the deep time of climate change and our ties to the more-than-human world. The artist has collaborated with palaeobotanists and climatologists, as well as with children from a forest kindergarten, not only to understand climate transformations but also to imagine new forms of coexistence with nature.

Uriel Orlow (b. 1973 in Zurich, lives and works between Lisbon, London and Zurich) is an artist whose practice is often in dialogue with other disciplines and people. His installations focus on specific locations, micro-histories and forms of haunting. Working across photography, film, drawing and sound his works bring different image-regimes and narrative modes into correspondence. He is the winner of the Grand Prix suisse d’art /Prix Meret Oppenheim 2023 and the CF Meyer Prize in 2020. In 2017, he received the Sharjah Biennale Prize. He also received the City of Zurich Prize in 2015 and three Swiss Art Awards (2008, 2009, 2012). His work has been presented at major international survey exhibitions, including the 54th Venice Biennale, Manifesta 9 and 12 in Genk and Palermo, as well as in numerous museums, galleries, and film festivals. He teaches at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), at the University of Westminster, London and at Maumaus, Lisbon.

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