The Martínez Guerricabeitia Collection of the University of Valencia opens the exhibition Anti-Fingerprints. Environmental artists facing the environmental crisis, which will be exhibited in the Martínez Guerricabeitia Room of the La Nau Cultural Center until 23 February 2025. Organized through the Vice-Rectorate of Culture and Society, with the management of the General UV Foundation, 'Contra-Huellas' is the manifestation of a project that, in the words of his commissioner, the cultural mediator Eugenia Rojo, “arises in a context of unprecedented ecological crisis” that aims to add to the “crucial role of culture” in the response to the environmental emergency. from here, what Anti-Fingerprints, a collective exhibition of five committed artists, It is defined as “a proposal where art and ecology converge, promoting a critical and active consciousness in the face of contemporary ecological challenges.”. In this sense, Eugenia Rojo emphasizes “the importance of art institutions to publicize this type of manifestations and support emerging artists”, who “are very artists, very committed because they live as they preach, they work in environmental education, in rural areas, along with communities in which they are really invested and in the reality that surrounds people”. And adds: “It seemed important to me to give them a voice”. The thesis of the exhibition has two starting points: science and nature. “It is a deep project that involves work of a scientific nature, technical and artisanal, and not the one that is unfortunately in fashion: “art and ecology that represents a “greenwashing” that does not go beyond the image.”, says the commissioner.
The exhibition presents more than fifteen works, most of them recontextualized, between facilities, graphic work, photograph, video and sculpture. Materials are normally reused to minimize their environmental impact, as well as its assembly: without frames, no plastics and low lights. Even, There is a proposal that measures the environmental footprint of the sample, taking part in the investigation of the CO₂ footprint in art, as well as its mental consequences on human beings, away from “wild and rugged nature”. Anti-Fingerprints is a title that Eugenia Rojo chooses for, figuratively, fight against denialism in the face of climate change and the ecological emergency situation in which the world finds itself. She explains that everyone, with our actions, we leave our carbon footprint on the planet, this expo too, which wants to be configured as a “counter-print” from a conceptual point of view to change the mentality; and that the active spectator reads the signs - something that, by the way, It is not done in contemporary art- because the objective is the dissemination of ideas and the completion of the work with reading comprehension and critical thinking.
