Ernsto Neto: GaiaMotherTree

Assembleia MotherTree: The Assembleia MotherTree is a forum for interdisciplinary and intercultural exchange 
Meditation Sessions: June 30–July 29, Mondays to Fridays: Drop-in meditation inside the artwork
Art Lab @ GaiaMotherTree: June 30–July 29, Young people can exchange their thoughts on themes relating to GaiaMotherTree
Talk by Jeremy Narby: July 4, 7pm 
Svetlana Spajic: July 17, 3pm, Serbian traditional singer, performer, educator, cultural activist and translator
Talk by Peter Fux: July 25, 7pm, Life, death and reality in the ancient cultures of the Andes

From June 30 to July 29, 2018, the Fondation Beyeler will be showing a project by the Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto (b. 1964 in Rio de Janeiro) in Zurich Main station. The monumental work GaiaMotherTree, a sculpture made of brightly colored hand-knotted cotton strips, resembles a tall tree, extending right up to the ceiling of the station concourse, which is twenty meters high. GaiaMotherTree is a walk-in structure that functions as a meeting place and a venue for interaction and meditation. A varied program of events for adults and children, with music, meditations, workshops, talks and guided introductions to the work, will take place inside the installation.

The Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto is one of the most important contemporary artists. His work has won worldwide recognition, with several presentations at the Venice Biennale and exhibitions in the world’s leading museums. It has been collected by, among others, the Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Tate Modern, London; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; and the Hara Museum, Tokyo.

Neto’s ideas have been influenced by the Brazilian Neo-Concrete movement of the 1960s and also by Minimal and Conceptual Art, and Arte Povera. Spirituality, humanism, and ecology are among his principal concerns. His work since the 1990s has been characterized by the use of materials and techniques that are unusual in art. His sculptures and installations often feature biomorphic forms and organic materials, with transparency, sensuality, and a spirit of community playing a major role. Viewers can touch the works and walk through them or set them in motion; in many cases, they also appeal to the sense of smell. The visitor is invited to concentrate on his or her own perception and interact with the work and its environment.

Over the last roughly thirty years this remarkable contemporary artist has won growing acclaim with his sculptures. Since 2013, Neto has been working in cooperation with the Huni Kuin, an indigenous community living in the Amazon region near the Brazilian border with Peru. The culture and customs of the Huni Kuin, their knowledge and craft skills, their aesthetic sense, their values, their world view, and their spiritual connection with nature, have transformed Neto’s conception of art and become integral elements of his artistic practice. The works inspired by this artistic and spiritual exchange invite the viewer to pause and reflect, but also to engage collectively with themes such as the relationship between humans and nature, issues of sustainability, and the preservation and dissemination of knowledge from other cultures.

GaiaMotherTree was made entirely by hand. Strips of cotton were knotted together with a finger-crocheting technique to form a giant transparent structure. The upper part of the work, shaped like the crown of a tree, will cover the ceiling of the station concourse. At the base of the tree there is a large space where visitors can linger and rest on seats arranged in a circle. Drop-shaped elements hanging from the branches are filled with aromatic spices and seeds.

In connection with this public art project, the Fondation Beyeler is showing a number of earlier sculptures by Neto in its central exhibition gallery. Major works from the 1980s and 1990s are supplemented by Altar for a plant (2017), presented in the grounds of the museum.

Assembleia MotherTree
Curated by Ernesto Neto, Daniela Zyman and Damian Christinger
June 30 and July 1, 12–8pm

Envisioned for the vibrant communal space of Neto’s GaiaMotherTree, the Assembleia MotherTree will convene for two days over 30 artists, thinkers, spiritual leaders, Amerindian pajés, anthropologists, poets, students, and land conservationists along with members of the public. Harnessing their dissimilar knowledges and practices the delegates of MotherTree are invited to narrate, debate, pray, and to think communally the most “impossible thoughts,” questioning what GaiaMotherTree might mean today. 

Assembleia MotherTree is thus a cosmo-ecological congregation. It points to our common futures and remembers our shared pasts. The Amazonian Huni Kuin, Yawanawa, and Tukano, ambassadors of the great forest, will contribute with rituals, songs, and stories to the radiant platform of research, learning, and production, that Neto initiated about five years ago, and since then has supported in Western artistic environments as well as in the Amazon. Together they have produced and continue to produce rigorous forms of research, as well as new artistic and political expressions which serve as example to forms of situated and embodied knowledges very much needed today.

Within a framework of migrating cultural ideas, projections, and misunderstandings, Assembleia MotherTree will thus explore how the collaborative efforts embodied in the project are at the core of the discourse on the futures of our planet.

The Assembleia MotherTree is a collaboration between the artist Ernesto Neto, Fondation Beyeler, ZHAW IUNR, ZHdK MAS Curating, and Kosmos.

For further information and the full programme, visit our website.