Opening January 24, 2025, Breath(e): Towards Climate and Social Justice considers art practices that address the climate crisis and anthropogenic disasters, and their inescapable intersection with issues of equity and social justice. This group exhibition, featuring Brandon Ballengée, Tiffany Chung, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Xin Liu, Cannupa Hanska Luger, ikkibawiKrrr, Yoshitomo Nara, Roxy Paine, Garnett Puett, Sandy Rodriguez, Sarah Rosalena, Clarissa Tossin and Jin-me Yoon, promotes climate advocacy through collaborative strategies of intervention, public participation, and visual transformation of scientific data. The work will be on view through May 10, 2025. 

Originally curated by Glenn Kaino and Mika Yoshitake and now on view at the Hammer Museum at UCLA as a part of Getty’s multi-institutional initiative PST Art: Art & Science Collide, the subsequent presentation of Breath(e) in Houston at the Moody Center for the Arts extends the conversation about climate change and environmental justice from Southern California to the Gulf Coast region of Texas, the center of the United States energy industry. This this end, the exhibition presents a modified selection of works that respond directly to the local geographical context, as well as the Moody gallery spaces.

 Jin-Me Yoon, for example, will produce a site-specific version of her 18-channel video installation Turning Time (Pacific Flyways), (2022). Xin Liu, a 2024 artist-in-residence at Rice University’s Chao Center for Asian Studies, will create a Houston-themed sculpture involving PETase enzymes, and Cannupa Hanska Luger will produce a new film centered on Houston, to be featured with the traveling installation. Brandon Ballengée, based in Louisiana, whose featured works address the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, will actively participate in community workshops.

Breath(e): Toward Climate and Social Justice is organized by the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and guest curated by Glenn Kaino and Mika Yoshitake with Jennifer Buonocore-Nedrelow, PST Fellow. The Moody Center for the Arts presentation is organized by Alison Weaver, Executive Director.

Breath(e): Toward Climate and Social Justice is made possible through lead grants from Getty as part of their PST Art: Art & Science Collide initiative.

The Moody presentation is made possible by Teiger Foundation, with major support from the Moody Center for the Arts Founders Circle. Additional support is provided by the Elizabeth Lee Moody Excellence Fund for the Arts, the Thomas D. and Pamela Riley Smith Endowment, and the Libbie Rice Shearn Moody Fund for the Arts.