Fondazione Prada's Venice Exhibition Uses Scientific Data to Visualize Climate Crisis

Curated by Dieter Roelstraete, the exhibition 'Everybody Talks About the Weather' at Fondazione Prada in Venice merges art with scientific metadata to address climate change. The show features data visualizations from the New Institute Centre For Environmental Humanities (NICHE) at Ca' Foscari University, displayed alongside works by historical and contemporary artists. It opens with a wall of screens broadcasting global weather forecasts, critiquing society's focus on weather over climate. Artists include Giorgione, Turner, Monet, Richter, Ruff, Gormley, Giorgio Andreotta Calò, and Paolo Cirio. The exhibition responds to Amitav Ghosh's 2016 book 'The Great Derangement', questioning why contemporary art struggles to address natural catastrophes. Roelstraete frames the climate crisis as a 'sublime' phenomenon, using metadata to give form to invisible destruction. The show functions as a 'physical timelapse', with artworks interwoven among data panels. A catalog includes essays by scientists and experts, and hundreds of books on climate change are available for consultation. The exhibition reflects Fondazione Prada's new direction of leveraging aesthetic power of scientific knowledge.