Item
Event

Breath(e): Toward Climate and Social Justice

A figure sculpted in pale golden beeswax comb rises from a rough clay-like body, its face half dissolved into hexagonal cells. Bees cling to the comb, still building, against a dark green blur of leaves.
In a dark, pillared hall with a mirror-black floor, a single square of white light glows on the far wall, a perfect black circle at its center, like an eclipse or an eye that has stopped blinking.
A man stands in the middle of a wide, empty street under a summer sky, arms raised high, holding up a red sign that reads “FREE WATER.” Behind him, low storefronts, power lines, and a faded shopping strip.
Beneath a white domed rotunda with tall arched windows, a ring of small upright screens stands just inside a circular balustrade, each glowing with its own image, like a flock paused mid-turn above the open floor below.
Seen from above in darkness, a floating city of tiny houses on stilts spreads across a black surface like islands, rooftops glowing yellow and copper, a woven dome at its heart, the whole settlement adrift on water that is not there.
In a bright white gallery, a life-size figure in a beaded, fringed suit of red, yellow, and blue stands with a clear helmet, like an astronaut from a future that remembers its ancestors. Behind it hang a rust-and-ochre panel crusted like dry earth and a black panel holding a pale, crater-like form.
Title
Breath(e): Toward Climate and Social Justice
Artist/Creator
Brandon Ballengée, Mel Chin, Tiffany Chung, Ron Finley, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Cannupa Hanska Luger, Ryoji Ikeda, ikkibawiKrrr, Michael Joo, Danil Krivoruchko, Xin Liu, Yoshitomo Nara, Otobong Nkanga, Roxy Paine, Garnett Puett, Rob Reynolds, Sandy Rodriguez, Sarah Rosalena, Bently Spang, Mika Tajima, Clarissa Tossin, Lan Tuazon, Yangkura, Jin-me Yoon, and Zheng Mahler
Description
A major exhibition at the Hammer Museum, UCLA, that centered environmental art addressing the climate crisis and human-caused disasters, and their inescapable intersection with equity and social justice. Curated by artist Glenn Kaino and guest curator Mika Yoshitake, with PST fellow Jennifer Buonocore-Nedrelow, it brought together more than 100 works by 25 intergenerational artists working in photography, multimedia, augmented reality, painting, living organisms, and more, and filled most of the Hammer's galleries and outdoor spaces. Conceived during the COVID-19 pandemic and the racial reckoning of 2020, the exhibition drew on ancestral Indigenous knowledge that treats all elements of nature as one family rather than as resources for human use.

New commissions included Cannupa Hanska Luger's multi-part installation Sovereign, a Garnett Puett Apisculpture made in collaboration with a living bee colony, Lan Tuazon's outdoor installation built from plastic waste donated by visitors, Ron Finley's garden installation Grounded, and Mel Chin's IOV (Interpretation of Vision), developed from stories gathered through an open call. Other works traced the slow violence of environmental harm, from LaToya Ruby Frazier's photographs of the Flint water crisis to Tiffany Chung's architectural models of climate displacement in Vietnam. Part of Getty's PST ART: Art & Science Collide and presented in partnership with Conservation International, the exhibition was also documented as a Getty case study in measuring and reducing an exhibition's carbon footprint. After its Los Angeles presentation, the exhibition traveled to the Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University in Houston and to the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis (August 7 – November 29, 2025), where a version with fourteen of the artists hosted UC Davis classes in the galleries, including a course whose students created the performance Breath, Soil, Water, Life in response to LaToya Ruby Frazier's Flint is Family in Three Acts.
Event Type
Exhibition
Date
September 14, 2024 – January 5, 2025
August 7 – November 29, 2025 (Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, UC Davis)
Location
Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, California
Organizer
Curated by Glenn Kaino and Mika Yoshitake, with Jennifer Buonocore-Nedrelow; organized by the Hammer Museum in partnership with Conservation International
Affiliated Organizations
UCLA Hammer Museum
Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art
Geographic Scope
International / Global
Climate & Ecology Themes
Climate Justice
Environmental Justice
Indigenous Knowledge and Sovereignty
Toxicity and Chemical Exposure
Discipline / Field
Arts & Design
Interdisciplinary
Concepts
More-than-Human Relations
Speculative Futures and Imagination
Audience / Engagement Type
Public / General Audience
Methods & Approaches
Art and Science Collaboration
Public Programming
Rights
Rights held by artist or creator
Website
hammer.ucla.edu
Item sets
California Art & Climate Archive
UC Los Angeles
UC Davis
Media
A figure sculpted in pale golden beeswax comb rises from a rough clay-like body, its face half dissolved into hexagonal cells. Bees cling to the comb, still building, against a dark green blur of leaves.Garnett Puett, Apisculpture
In a dark, pillared hall with a mirror-black floor, a single square of white light glows on the far wall, a perfect black circle at its center, like an eclipse or an eye that has stopped blinking.Ryoji Ikeda, point of no return
A man stands in the middle of a wide, empty street under a summer sky, arms raised high, holding up a red sign that reads “FREE WATER.” Behind him, low storefronts, power lines, and a faded shopping strip.LaToya Ruby Frazier, Moses West Holding a “Free Water” Sign, Flint, Michigan
Beneath a white domed rotunda with tall arched windows, a ring of small upright screens stands just inside a circular balustrade, each glowing with its own image, like a flock paused mid-turn above the open floor below.Jin-me Yoon, Turning Time (Pacific Flyways)
Seen from above in darkness, a floating city of tiny houses on stilts spreads across a black surface like islands, rooftops glowing yellow and copper, a woven dome at its heart, the whole settlement adrift on water that is not there.Tiffany Chung, stored in a jar: monsoon, drowning fish, color of water, and the floating world
In a bright white gallery, a life-size figure in a beaded, fringed suit of red, yellow, and blue stands with a clear helmet, like an astronaut from a future that remembers its ancestors. Behind it hang a rust-and-ochre panel crusted like dry earth and a black panel holding a pale, crater-like form.Cannupa Hanska Luger, Roxy Paine, and Sarah Rosalena, Breath(e) at the Manetti Shrem Museum