SUPERFLEX will remain on display until Nov. 22.
Photo by Suzanne Townsend | The Crow’s Nest
By Suzanne Townsend
The University of South Florida’s College of the Arts Contemporary Art Museum now straddles Tampa Bay.
Since 1989, the USF Tampa campus has filled its Contemporary Art Museum with both visiting artist and student exhibitions, and now on the other side of the bay USF St. Petersburg hosts an extension of the museum in Harbor Hall called GENERATOR. The goal for this branch is to function as an incubator of ideas and a place for expanded artistic experimentation.
The inaugural exhibition at GENERATOR is “SUPERFLEX: This Is The Tip Of The Iceberg,” curated by Sarah Howard and on loan from the Danish artist group SUPERFLEX and Galería OMR in Mexico City.
This immersive installation is made up of large-scale mixed-media designs aimed to prompt reflection on the reality and consequences of climate change. Issues like these are particularly relevant to residents here in South Florida, many of whom live mere feet above sea level.
Gallery assistant Neha Mitra explained that it is a two-piece exhibition. Upon entering the gallery doors viewers find themselves facing a glowing neon blue sign bearing the title of the exhibition.
Through the curtains just beyond visitors stand in a dark room where a video plays. “As you enter the space you see an animation of a thing that not many people know what it is. It’s a Siphonophore, this kind of jellyfish-like creature and essentially what it does is it comes up to the surface at night and cleans up all the carbon in the atmosphere. It’s bioluminescent, so sometimes if you go out in the harbor you can see it if you’re lucky,” Mitra said.
Excess atmospheric carbon levels are one of the main driving forces behind global warming. This is why the siphonophore’s role of removing CO2 from the atmosphere is vital not only for oceanic but global ecosystems alike. “They are super crucial for our survival,” said SUPERFLEX co-founder Bjørn Christiansen during a lecture delivered at Harbor Hall last month.
The video, titled “Vertical Migration,” was originally projected 500 feet high onto the United Nations Secretariat Building in New York City during the 76th United Nations General Assembly in 2021 in order to highlight the critical nature of biodiversity and more generally the importance of recognizing and acting upon the issue of climate change.
“The topic [of the UN meeting] was biodiversity. Humans cannot just sit there alone and discuss biodiversity. So we took one of those creatures that we met…We went down and filmed at night and decided we wanted to create an animation based on real footage,” Christiansen said.
“Vertical Migration” and the Tip Of The Iceberg exhibition are truly at the intersection of art and activism. To experience the installation yourself head over to Harbor Hall before the exhibition leaves on Nov. 22.
