DANCING WITH ALL exhibition explores ecological empathy through interspecies art at Kanazawa museum

The exhibition DANCING WITH ALL at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa presents works by over 20 international artists exploring tensions between natural and artificial realms. Colombian artist Maria Fernanda Cardoso's 2016 video installation On the Origins of Art I–II features an Australian jumping spider's mating dance, with vibrations transmitted to viewers through a floor plate. Adrián Villar Rojas contributes The End of the Imagination I (2022), a massive sculpture assembled by humans, machines, and AI using concrete, soil, glass, auto parts, and recycled plastics, with AI simulating millennia of environmental effects. Aki Inomata's ongoing project How to Carve a Sculpture (2018–) involves wooden beams gnawed by beavers in five zoos, later enlarged to human scale. The exhibition includes works using organic materials, digital tools, upcycling, traditional ink techniques, fabric, and scientific collaborations. PNAT, a company associated with the University of Florence, presents Fabbrica dell'Aria (2023), a micro-greenhouse with tropical plants functioning as an air purification system. Indigenous artworks from the Amazon, Pacific Northwest, and Africa examine human-nonhuman ecosystem connections. The show runs through 16 March 2025 and addresses themes of nonhuman intelligence, authorship, and ecological crisis through interdisciplinary approaches.