Trying to make sense of rapid changes in the Earth system
BAC and Uppsala University Graduate School on Sustainability Studies (GRASS) have the pleasure to present the Danish artist Rikke Luther's exhibition Dust & Flow. The exhibition features large scale textile wall drawings and a new film in which the artist depicts how humans struggle to understand the incredibly rapid changes in the Earth System.

Rikke Luther's new film Dust & Flow: Muds, Movement, Time, Scale (2024) is part of her research on the social, political and biochemical effects of the Earth's new ‘mud landscapes’ caused by global warming. The film takes audiences on a journey through the shifting landscapes of Gotland, Iceland and Svalbard, contrasting new research on sediment fluxes, environmental DNA and geological “deep time" with our limited cultural understanding of history and time. The script is performed by British actor David Bateson, who plays all the characters in the film: the narrator, the artist herself and her inner dialogue, and two supporting roles.

Alongside the film, Rikke Luther presents six of her large-scale 'wall drawings' printed on canvas, with themes that have been hotly debated by Gotland's public in recent years. The latest textiles explore the role of the oceans in the new mud landscapes. World Mud Maps 11 & 12 are based on the artist's visits to Gotland and Svalbard in 2023. Alongside these, the artist presents earlier textiles such as the huge 6.3 x 2.45m Map 9: Architecture in Democracy, Post-Democracy and Anti-Democracy (2020), which traces the cultural significance of concrete. These works are complemented by three textiles from The Sand Bank series (2018), which maps the global sand extraction - one of the planetary’s largest environmental conflicts - on land and in the seabed.

Searching for sustainability
In connection with the exhibition Dust & Flow, educators and students from five different study programmes at Uppsala University Campus Gotland will come together for Searching for Sustainability - a three-day interdisciplinary event on 4-6 September. The aim is to create a basis for collaborative, creative and critical learning. Starting from the theme Materiality and the Common Good, participants will deepen their perspectives on sustainability through the exhibition of Rikke Luther and experiment with art-making in the workshop Earth Scanning, led by artist Torbjörn Limé.