Dani Bernstein

Arlington, MA

ARTIST STATEMENT

Queer has many definitions and can function as an adjective or a verb. Queering refers to taking something and looking at it through a lens that questions or troubles it. Radical queer perspectives become transformative opportunities to question and decolonize. The Art of Living queers perspectives on life, climate crisis, and humanity. Art is not just what appears on the wall in front of you, but an expansive universal language and way of life. Art is how we assign meaning. It is our creation, the care we take of each other, the intersection of earthly and divine, and so much more.

Queering study of climate change implies new methods of fluidity and healing. Presenting human and natural perspectives simultaneously challenges misconceptions that humans and nature are inherently separate. Interdependence opposes beliefs that humans are inevitably and irrevocably at odds with the natural world and each other. Fluidity instead encourages resistance against structures of separation by highlighting causality between contemporary perspectives and the state of our world.

Engaging in creativity together becomes a communal opportunity to practice hope, healing, and change. The Art of Living provides a window into a hopeful and playful world, built on animacy and communality, where queerness becomes an alternative creative model for learning, living, questioning, reinventing, and more!

This project was supported by a generous grant from the Steven Daniel Smallen Memorial Fund.