Anthropogenic climate change has triggered environmental crises of increasingly urgent and epic proportions. Global heating, loss of biodiversity, microplastic pollution, and other existential threats have become part of the daily news cycle, where recent headlines appear ripped out of the first chapter of a teen dystopian novel: “How Climate Change Could Release World-Ending Super Bacteria,” or “Hummingbirds Could Be Wiped Out By Global Warming: Scientists,” or more dire, “A Hotter Future Is Certain, Climate Panel Warns.” The warnings of a Mad Max future are everywhere, and they seem to be coming to pass, but in Kalina Winska’s work, you see a place to creatively process the chaotic impacts of climate change, and to imagine new forms of landscapes that bring together the natural, virtual, and technological realms. Since 2015, Winska has been creating visually and materially layered works on paper that address climate change and human impulses to control and document environmental phenomena. Data and forms of visualization used to understand extreme weather events are taken up in Unusual Phenomena, an installation of turbulent clouds interrupted by hanging ropes and buoys. While the Unaccustomed Lands series is a panoramic band of speculative landscapes that highlight the role of creative freedom in confronting these crises. 

Nature is a fragile, but highly interconnected system, which is something I think of as I observe pests decimate newly planted seedlings or encounter the remnants of a bird's egg that became victim to a greater predator. But the increasing frequency of unprecedented weather events represent more than the typical vicissitudes of nature–this system is slowly collapsing and morphing into something different, a place in which life is more difficult. For communities along the Gulf Coast or Atlantic that have been devastated by rising sea levels, or communities in the Southwest that have been leveled by wildfires, the challenges of the climate crisis have and are already being felt. Meanwhile, our attention is constantly diverted to the next disaster. It is this chaos, and sense of uncertainty about what the future will bring, that is touched on in Unusual Phenomena. 

A stable climate has been central to the development of humanity, and a defining feature of the Holocene–the geological era immediately preceding our own, the Anthropocene. And it is the experience of stability that is most at risk with rising carbon emissions. If the formation of civilizations over 6,000 years ago depended on a stable climate, how will an increasingly unstable climate shape our societies? Walking around and under the clouds in Unusual Phenomena is disorienting. Above, clouds of crumpled and folded sheets of Tyvek that are printed with NOAA’s Storm Data publication, snake through and around neon bands that encircle with undulating lines mimicked along the floor. The monthly publication, Storm Data and Unusual Weather Phenomena, contains chronological and state-by-state listings of storms and unusual weather with details on number of fatalities, injuries, and the extent of property damage. Winska used Xerox lithography to print reports from the summer months during periods of extreme wildfires and hurricanes; the accumulated printed marks representing the destruction, loss, and displacement brought on by increasingly volatile weather events. Hanging from the cloud formations are ropes attached to plastic buoys and floats scattered along the ground, like the debris that washes on shore after a particularly violent storm, and a reference to the coastal communities impacted by extreme hurricanes. Unusual Phenomena incorporates data that provides empirical evidence of these life-changing weather events, but it is presented in a format that distances and obscures the details as they circle above the viewer. Instead, the bursts of neon hues, the swerving of the plastic molding, the entanglement of ropes and paper and plastic, mirror the unease and the disruption of these events. 

According to climate scientists, global economies must reduce their carbon emissions drastically to avoid reaching 1.5 degrees of global warming–a tipping point that, once crossed, will lead to irreversible damage that threatens all life on earth. Researchers currently put the odds at reaching that goal at “50/50”. The uncertainty of a 50/50 future, and the chaos of the present climate under 1 degree of warming are captured in Unusual Phenomena. In contrast, a creative reimagining of the natural environment through digital and virtual forms of representation is a running theme through the works in Unaccustomed Lands. These works on paper blur reality and representation, the environment and its technological translations, with imagery taken from weather patterns, climate models, and computer simulations. Working on Yupo paper, a synthetic tree-free paper, Winska builds up her images with layers of gouache and acrylic washes, and lines of graphite or oil pastel. Black fields overlayed with undulating grids and neon dotted lines appear like topographical maps for a digital age, intersected by pools of color, suggesting oil spills or coral reefs in hues of blues, oranges, greens, and searing yellows. Bursts of neon colors, or strong bisecting lines, seem to move the eye from one point to another, an inability to focus in one place, or to rest, constantly caught by the interplay of patterns, lines, color, and texture. 

What is to make of these exuberant and visionary landscapes? The artist refers to the panorama of landscapes, where forms and lines are echoed across pieces, as a hyper-story composed of fragments of computer-generated climate models and daily weather forecasts. The undulating forms suggest natural landscapes, while the hard edges, unusual perspectives, and non-naturalistic colors are akin to the landscapes of a virtual reality environment. They prompt questions over what our interactions with the environment–virtual or natural–will be like in the future. The forms in Unaccustomed Lands flow into each other and connect with the central installation through complementary hues, thereby creating a dialog that links weather data from extreme storms, unpredictable climate patterns, and speculative landscapes. 

Regardless of our 50/50 chance to avert 1.5 degrees of global warming, our surroundings will be much different over the next 50 years than the previous 50 years in ways that we have not fully grasped or understood. We still have the possibility to re-imagine a built environment that prioritizes the natural world. Unaccustomed Lands are unexpected, unfamiliar, but also possibly extraordinary. They exist in the space between the real and the possible, the haze that enshrouds the ability to imagine what could be, before a future sets in that closes such possibilities. While Unaccustomed Lands show the speculative, Unusual Phenomena is grounded in the concrete and empirical. Together these works remind us that climate change is an ever-present threat, but there is still space and freedom to imagine alternate realities. 

About Meghan Bissonnette Ph.D. – the exhibition curator:

Art historian, artist, curator, and arts administrator living in western Colorado, Meghan Bissonnette, has a BA in Art History and BFA in Fine Arts from NSCAD University in Halifax, Canada; and an MA and PhD in Art History from York University in Toronto, Canada. Her current research focuses on abstract expressionist sculpture, contemporary environmental photography, and ruin imagery. Meghan is currently working on several research projects: a book on the reception of abstract expressionist sculpture, an article on the American photographer David T. Hanson, and an essay on aerial environmental photography for a book on picturing post-industrialism. Meghan presented her research at national and international conferences, including the College Art Association and Universities Art Association of Canada annual conferences.

The exhibition essay was commissioned by the Georgia State University School of Art & Design Gallery.