Telluria

The exhibition title Telluria is derived from the Latinate root tellur (meaning “of or relating to the earth”) coupled with a lyrical and mythic suffix (-uria). The name recalls that of the “lost continent” of Lemuria, a land-shelf theorized to have once connected Madagascar and India, which later took on a mythology of its own as the birthplace of humanity and the cradle of a spiritual civilization. As such, Telluria speaks of — and to — primal origins and a mythic essence connected to the Earth: an enduring fascination with how the land and its unique features have shaped species and stories, and how the history of civilization is inextricably bound up with ecology and myth-making.

Now, more than ever, we need new myths to re-imagine our relationship with the sentient Earth and our place within the cosmos. The Gaia hypothesis of the late 20th century shaped an understanding of the Earth as a giant, self-regulating organism, where biology and the physical environment evolve alongside each other. Today, in a time of ecological peril, mythological thinking opens up space for imagining alternatives, enfolding the human with the more-than-human. In stories woven from earth, dream, and urgency, Telluria envisions an intertwining of the ancient and the future, the material and the mythic.