Pavilion concept
I can lose my hands, and still live. I can lose my legs and still live. I can lose my eyes and still live. I can lose my hair, eyebrows, nose, arms, and many other things and still live.
But if I lose the air I die. If I lose the sun I die. If I lose the earth I die. If I lose the water I die. If I lose the plants and animals I die.
All of these things are more a part of me, more essential to my every breath, than my so-called body.
What is my real body?
Jack D Forbes
Laetania Belai Djandam looking at Yupirungáwa by Vandria Borari inside the Health Pavilion at Cop 28
Audiences at the Health Pavilion during Cop 28
Exhibited works
Asking the salmon to return
Jenni Laiti
Bivdit luosa máhccat // Asking the salmon to return (2022) Film
Jenni Laiti that raises awareness to the cultural and ecological importance of the Atlantic salmon to the Sámi people, in light of the species' detrimental decline due to the impacts of climate change across the Arctic. The word ‘bivdit’ in Sámi language means to catch something, but also to ask for or request something from someone, alluding to the Sámi approach of ‘asking for permission’ as opposed to extractive approaches to the environment. Laiti is an Indigenous rights activist, a climate justice advocate, and a Duojár (Master of Traditional Sámi Crafts).
Bodies Joined by a molecule of air
Invisible Flock and Jon Bausor
Bodies Joined by a molecule of air (2022) Sculpture
A seven metre sculpture, designed to envelop the pavilion centre stage as a reminder of how human health is entirely dependant on the health of ecosystems. The work explores fractals, the biologic patterns that are present in human bodies and mirrored in the bodies of plants, trees and our more-than-human relatives. The sculpture is at once a human lung and two trees falling into each other. Sand cast using recycled radiators and engine parts and fallen pine tree branches.
Death by Pollution
Black & Brown films
Death by Pollution (2021) Film
9-minute film about Ella Roberta Adoo Kissi-Debrah, a 9-year-old girl who lived in London and was the first person in the UK to have air pollution listed as the cause of death, in 2013. During her life, nitrogen dioxide emissions where Ella lived, exceeded both EU and national legal limits. Her mother, Rosamund Kissi-Debrah, now fights to make clean air a human right. Directed by Usayd Younis and Cassie Quarless, this story shows how communities of colour can be worst affected by the levels of toxic pollution that plague our air.
How to Make an Ocean
Kasia Molga
How to Make an Ocean (2021) Installation
Twelve tiny glass bottles, each containing the artist's tears and an algae from the North Sea, detailing a date, a reason for crying and the name of the hosted algae. Exploring the chemical composition of human tears to see how they could make a healthy tiny marine ecosystem. To use her own tears to host a sea life became a form of catharsis and a constructive way to deal with personal and also then environmental loss.
Honey
Ogiek Peoples’ Development Program & Claire De Waard
Honey (2022) Audio, Embroidery
Honey (2022), a 33-minute soundscape featuring the biodiversity of the Mau Forest in the Rift Valley, Kenya, where populations of honeybees have declined in recent decades due to deforestation, forest encroachment and logging. Honey is produced by Ogiek People’s Development Program and Invisible Flock.
Paired with the sounds of Honey, Claire De Waard’s Honey Bees (2022), incites a visual and tactile experience with 200 jewellery-like handmade embroideries of bees.
Yupirungáwa
Vandria Borari
Yupirungáwa (2023) Ceramic sculpture
Borari is an Indigenous leader and ceramicist artist from the Borari Alter do Chão territory carrying out research on the relationship between peoples and plants in the Amazon's past. Her ceramic sculptures represent seeds of tucumã and curuá found in archaeological sites in the Amazon rainforest, in the Lower-Amazon region, Brazil. Remains from such sites dating back from over 8,000 years ago convey the great importance of human agency in maintaining the ecological balance of the Amazon rainforest's web of life which, ultimately, leads to planetary health – the health of humans as well as the complete environment they belong to.
The Crying Place
Siwakorn Odachao and Lazy Man Coffee
The Crying Place (2023) Audio
In Pgak’yau, Haku (ฮากุ) means the crying place. That is what we call the earth. In all important moments, we cry. When we are born we cry, when we feel happy we cry, and we cry because we suffer. Pgak’yau philosophy expresses the need to slow down for the earth, and the need to take care and take accountability for our world. Produced by Lazy Man Coffee and Invisible Flock.
Teardrops of Our Grandmother
Jenni Laiti and Carl-Johan Utsi
Teardrops of Our Grandmother (2023) Film
We witness the end of our world every day. The melting glaciers are the teardrops of our grandmother. My people have been here since the last ice age, and when the glaciers are gone, we will be gone too.
How to Become Wholesome
Kasia Molga
(2022) Installation
How to Become Wholesome is about the investigation how bodily waste in the broadest sense (tears, sweat, and urine) could contribute towards the wellbeing of aquatic organisms. Extending from the How to Make an Ocean, this work poses questions: how to care for one's own body to become the most nutritious for the marine ecosystem? What tools to use to harvest nutrients from the human body? How to test harvested substances for its suitability? And what are aesthetics of that and developing connections between human body and the ocean?
Pavilion design drawing Invisible Flock and Jon Bausor.
