Since the 1990s, the works of Mark Dion (born 1961 in New Bedford/USA) have moved along the borders of art and science. The artist is particularly interested in concepts of nature and tries to deconstruct historical and current visual and ideological narratives that have shaped human knowledge and experience of the natural world throughout history.

The unusual cabinets of curiosities he sets up in cultural and scientific institutions ignore conventional classifications, rejecting forms of hierarchisation, such as between the old and the new, the common and the rare, the noble and the vulgar. During his performances, he conducts excavations in places that are not considered relevant from a scientific perspective. The objects he finds are preserved without any distinction of value. Like a landscape archaeologist, Mark Dion is particularly interested in the disappearance of animals and the impact of humans on their environment.

More about Mark

Mark Dion comprehensively questions our relationship with nature, in particular the practice of systematic classification and organisation. The artist takes a humorous look at the sciences invented by humans and their purely anthropocentric perspective on other living beings, the very attitude of superiority that the human species claims over the rest of the planet.

Conversely, for Mark Dion, the unbroken self-conception of sciences and their task - to observe, catalogue and dissect the world - is a central approach to understanding ‘how, when and why we have evolved into societies whose relationship to the environment is suicidal’.