The Dutch artist Fanja Bouts’ monumental tapestry at Kunsthall 3,14 is an all-encompassing mappa mundi, a map of the world. Starting from the Big Bang at the center of the tapestry, the map expands outward into chaotically collapsing systems. The abundant imagery takes us from celestial bodies—supernovas, angelic creatures and the sun—to the planet Earth, its troubled land, and the dark depths of the ocean. Countless playful characters, both human and non-human, organic and inorganic, create animated stories of our symbiotic existence.

 

Yet, with a closer look, the colorful and fable-like images might have lured us into a honey trap. Within the sweet colors loom the rotten insides of the current state of the Earth — from over-consumption of chicken to senseless warfare and destruction of biodiversity — the map unravels stories of our geological time, where human- and capitalist-driven systems create fundamental changes to the planet. How can we take action on the climate disaster without falling into denial, naïve dreaming, or dull apathy?

 

Bout’s work is a critical examination of the role humans play in environmental devastation. With overfishing, burning oil leaks and Elon Musk colonizing space, the map studies humanity’s position in the dynamic ecosystem, where every element is interdependent and co-evolving. Humans have been at the top of the food chain only a minuscule moment, measured in Earth time, yet with devastating consequences. Other animals, like lions or bears, evolved to the top over millions of years, which allowed other species time to adjust—gazelles evolved faster legs, and hyenas developed ways to cooperate against predators. But humankind, with the help of technology, rocketed to the top so quickly that the ecosystem didn’t have a chance to adjust to the new predator. Contrary to what is often thought, nature is not wild and free in the 21st century but irreversibly influenced and constructed by humans.​

 

The tapestry’s title – A Largely Distorted yet Surprisingly Ordered Map of Regular Irregularities: A Dense Description of The Present Day History of The Future – reflects the many paradoxes present both in the ecological now and the wider universe. Ordered and distorted, regular and irregular, patterns can be recognized in the chaos of the universe—and chaos itself can become a system. At the same time, even small, seemingly insignificant events caused by humans can influence the entirety of Earth’s ecosystem. The dynamic system, constantly influenced by human and more-than-human agents, is also reflected in the technique. The double-cloth knitted tapestry is made of wool and cotton, produced on a circular knitting machine at the TextielLab in the Netherlands, based on Bout’s design. Tapestries of this scale are more commonly woven than knitted, as weaving allows for greater detail and a broader range of colors. However, knitting offers the opportunity to experiment with textures and reliefs, since the yarn swells after steaming—depending on how tightly it is knitted. Unlike weaving, knitting is far less predictable; the process always carries an element of surprise. The material behaves in unexpected ways, pushing and pulling the work towards unforeseen outcomes.

 

As showcased in the tapestry's stories, humanity’s conquest of nature is rarely a well-thought-out and controlled process; it is most often characterized by unintended and unforeseen consequences. An example of this is the Norwegian government’s plan to open a large part of its seabed to mining, despite warnings from scientists worldwide. Deep-sea mining could be catastrophic for marine life—in order to extract minerals, paradoxically for the benefit of green technologies, enormous mining machines would turn over the seafloor and release toxins into the water. Hundreds of meters below the surface, the machines would greatly disturb the darkness and silence on which deep-sea ecosystems depend. These areas contain the greatest biodiversity on Earth, much of which is still unknown—secrets hidden in the dark but vibrant depths of the ocean.

 

Empty oceans and burned forests may soon fail to function as inherent parts of the ecosystem, but in the capitalist order, they can serve as sublime-catastrophic visions, entertaining a dulled audience. Bout’s sarcastic tone asks if we would like to buy a trip to the void. In the tapestry, heaven is perceived as a Disney castle—an overwhelming canon of joy, the epitome of cultural capitalism in the West. While some still think of capitalism strictly as a matter of economics, many scholars have started to see it as a fundamental way of organizing nature and the conditions of life. After all, every market and every commodity is entangled with more-than-human nature, one way or another.

 

Hope should not be sought in naïve dreams or simple answers; instead, it can take the form of continuous and persistent action in a complex, multispecies world. The new work in the exhibition—a sound installation combined with risograph prints titled These are not blueprints—takes its starting point in the degrowth movement in economics and political ecology. In the sonic piece, visitors can listen to interviews and conversations with various researchers within the degrowth milieu. The movement critiques humanity’s compulsive hunger for growth, which, as argued by the movement’s supporters, should not be an end in itself. Degrowth, both as a concept and a theory, aims to reduce economic growth, resource consumption, and energy use in wealthy economies while fostering the growth of developing economies to achieve sustainable living standards. Degrowth does not equate to radical visions of living in a hole in the woods, but slower, simpler, and meaningful living. The movement prioritizes the well-being of humans and more-than-human others over unsustainably growing economies, moving towards post-growth world.

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Fanja Bouts critically assesses the (environmental) challenges that we face today through illustrated webs of life. With a background in physics and astronomy, moving image and most recently a masters in environmental sciences, recurring themes such as the reimagination of our planet in a just, more-than-human ecological framework are viewed through the lens of (political) ecology, philosophy and natural sciences. Past autumn her work was shown as part of MANIFESTA 15, and she has just presented a new woven tapestry for Dutch Customs, made in commission of the Dutch Ministry of Internal Affairs.  

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Curated by Malin Barth

 

The knitted tapestry was created in collaboration with TextielLab, the professional workshop of Textielmuseum in Tilburg, Netherlands, in 2023.