Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara examines global warming, natural resource depletion, and other environmentally devastating circumstances in the exhibition "Beyond 2°". 

Beyond 2° is a group exhibition that presents a range of global artistic perspectives on the environmental and social effects of natural resource exploitation featuring  Ursula Biemann (b. 1955, Zurich, CH) and Paulo Tavares (b. 1980, Campinas, BR), Carolina Caycedo (b. 1978, London, UK), Olga Kisseleva (b. St. Petersburg, RU), Nicholas Mangan (b. 1979, Geelong, AU), Otobong Nkanga (b. Kano, NG), Robert Zhao Renhui (b. 1983, Singapore, SG), Andrea Polli (b. Albuquerque, NM), Amie Siegel (b. 1974, Chicago, IL), and Melanie Smith (b. 1965, London, UK).

Two degrees above pre-industrial temperature is widely agreed by countries as a threshold beyond which climate change risks become irreversibly high. The artists’ works in this exhibition, while addressing various factors that lead to global warming, focus on ways in which environmentally destructive industries and activities gravely affect communities within which they operate.

“This exhibition features a diverse array of projects by internationally renowned artists who are exploring climate issues based on in-depth research and fieldwork,” says Brooke Kellaway, MCASB Associate Curator. “As society grows more impervious to the increasing frequency of disturbing assessment reports on the impacts of climate crisis, defeated ballot initiatives, and debates over the impacts of under-regulated industries, these artists’ works  offer relevant and critical perspectives to timely and ever-complex questions around our relationship to nature.”

In multidisciplinary and collaborative projects ranging from painting, sculpture, and performance, the artists in this exhibition bring attention to the social, political, and cultural implications involved in natural resource-based operations and their artworks reflect large-scale infrastructural projects including open-pit mining, rubber tree farming, and hydroelectric dams that affect local ecologies. Their works call to question the many forces and systems, however subtle or blatant, that influence our relationship to landscape, and perception of its value.

The exhibition is on view through July 24, 2016.