This event will now be held online
Join Lucia Pietroiusti, Head of Ecologies at Serpentine Gallery, Zakiya McKenzie, journalist, academic, nature writer and A Fine Toothed Comb artist Rebecca Chesney on their practices exploring the intersection of art, climate justice, climate change, ecology, history and politics. Programmed to coincide with the exhibition A Fine Toothed Comb.
Tickets are free but booking is required.
Speaker biogs:
Lucia Pietroiusti is Head of Ecologies at Serpentine, London. As a curator, she works at the intersection of art, ecology and systems, often outside of the exhibition space.
She was the founder of Serpentine’s General Ecology project (2018-ongoing) and the curator of the Golden Lion-winning opera-performance, Sun & Sea by Rugile Barzdziukaite, Vaiva Grainyte and Lina Lapelyte, the Lithuanian Pavilion at the 58th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia (and its 2020-2025 international tour). Current and recent Serpentine activities include the festival, podcast and research project The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish, an interdisciplinary enquiry into theories of mind in more-than-human species and beings; Serpentine’s new Ecologies strategy across systems, infrastructure, programmes and networks, as well as the Infinite Ecologies Marathon (Prelude 14 October 2023; Festival July 2024) and ongoing projects by CLIMAVORE and others.
Zakiya McKenzie is a PhD researcher of Black British journalism. She was an Ujima Radio Bristol Green and Black Ambassador in 2016. In 2020 she wrote and recorded The Forest, for BBC Radio 4 drawing parallels between the Blue Mountains of Jamaica and the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire. Zakiya’s essay ‘An Elegy for Lignum Vitae’ was published in the The Wild Isles: An Anthology of the Best of British and Irish Nature Writing in 2021.
Her 2021 historical fiction pamphlet Testimonies on the History of Jamaica Vol 1 (Rough Trade Books) presents an imaginary discourse among a time-traveller, an enslaved woman and one of Jamaica’s first maroons.
Rebecca Chesney was born in and works in Preston. Recent works include a residency and solo show at Astley Hall in Lancashire (2022); a 600m² wildflower planting scheme in the town of Church, Lancashire for Super Slow Way (2022), The Storm (Chapter 2) a sound work broadcast on Lithuanian National Radio (2023) and a collaboration with artist Lubaina Himid for TONSPUR Kunstverein Wien to create an 8-channel sound installation and series of posters exhibited in Vienna city centre, Austria (2021). Chesney was Visiting Artist at Yorkshire Sculpture Park in 2021 and awarded a Lucas Artist Fellowship to Montalvo in California, USA in 2016. Current commissions include making new works for the British Textile Biennial 2023 and Hestercombe Gallery in Somerset. Her work is currently on show in The Brontës and the Wild at the Brontë Parsonage Museum.