OCMA (Orange County Museum of Art)

This exhibition critiques traditional landscape and environmental art that often ignores the human presence and presents a pure image of nature ripe for human exploitation. Selected works from OCMA’s permanent collection are presented in atypical juxtaposition so that they call attention to the ways in which human activity is integral to the earth and the ways humans have used the land to colonize and abuse its natural resources and human beings. The title references Langston Hughes’ poem Earth Song, which celebrates the sensuous earth and the coming of spring. Like the poem’s subject, the bodies referenced in these artworks are sensuous, alive, and speaking from the margins of an earth in crisis and worthy of protection.