The California Air Resources Board has commissioned six artists for a public art installation addressing climate change on their new Riverside campus coming in 2021.
The initiative seeks to engage the public on climate change issues through a permanent public art program on CARB’s future 400,000 square foot, net zero energy facility in Riverside.
Emily Womack is the public art curator for the project.
Womack: “What has been so exciting about this project from our end is that the commitment and the desire to have it be something really at the forefront of art talking about sustainability and climate change. Because the mission of CARB which, you know, is to not exist in 50 years through their work - for that same kind of level of radicality around air quality and climate change to exist in the artwork itself.”
Womack says the installation has a strong social justice message in addition to its focus on climate change.
Womack: “We have artists who are turning out from a social justice standpoint about who has access to clean air and who doesn't, and how oftentimes that follows other historically under-represented lines and trajectories about how air is perhaps the forefront of the combat that is going to happen to save our planet in the future, and the very near future, and the political-ness of that, the fact that it doesn't actually follow boundaries of countries or cities or states.”
Noé Montes is one of the six artists commissioned for the project.
Montes: “So actually my work involves quite a bit of community engagement, as kind of the main part of the work that I'm doing right now for this project. And I also, I'm mainly a photographer, that's kind of my medium, so what I'm doing right now is interviewing and photographing people there in the areas of San Bernardino, Riverside, Ontario, about this issue of air quality. So some of the images that I'm taking now will be used for many things including the design of a mural that's going to be installed at that site.”
The CARB building and installation will be open in 2021. More information is available at carb.dysonwomack.com.