Light Work is presenting “Karolina Karlic: Rubberlands,” an ongoing photographic survey by Santa Cruz-based artist Karolina Karlic mapping the ways rubber manufacturing is socially, ecologically and systemically formed. The exhibition will be on view in the Kathleen O. Ellis Gallery at Light Work from March 20-July 27.
There will be an opening reception on Thursday, March 29, from 5-7 p.m. with an artist talk at 6 p.m. This event is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served. Light Work is located in the Robert B. Menschel Media Center at 316 Waverly Ave.
“Rubberlands” follows the trajectory of Karlic’s earlier work, which explored the automobile industry in Michigan. “Rubberlands” proceeds from Midwest cities like Detroit and Akron, Ohio—once the rubber capital of the world—which serve as entry points to networks of globalization. Connecting the company archives of Henry Ford, Goodyear, Goodrich, General Tire and Firestone, she traces the evolution of an industry that relies heavily on outsourcing of the “Hevea brasiliensis” (Amazonian rubber tree). Her photographic fieldwork in Brazil has taken her to manufacturing plants in Salvador and Itaparica, Michelin rubber plantations in the Atlantic forest, a fisherman’s village on the coastal rivers of Itubera in Bahia and the vestiges of Henry Ford’s planned community in the Amazon.
Karolina Karlic, “Emilly Farias in the Michelin Rubber Groves,” April 2014, Michelin Rubber Plantation, Bahia, Brazil
Karlic reveals threatened landscapes, sites of reforestation and working factories against the backdrop of their surrounding communities; scenes where living things are transformed into assets and removed from their life worlds to supply the demands of capital. By weaving together historical archives and contemporary renderings of environs shaped by production, Karlic moves beyond capturing a static place and time—and instead, configures a dynamic space for contemplating the inextricable social and personal bonds surrounding labor and natural resources. Here, she invites the viewer into a new imaginary where historical consciousness is critical to reflecting on our relationship to consumption.
Karlic was born in Wroclaw, Poland, and immigrated to Detroit in 1987. She holds an M.F.A. from the California Institute of the Arts and a B.F.A. from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. She is an assistant professor in the art department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she currently resides. Karlic’s work focuses in on labor, industry, diaspora, environmental concerns and the effects of social upheaval, and has led her to capture imagery all over the world, including the United States, her native Poland, Ukraine, Sierra Leone, French Polynesia and Brazil. She has been the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship as well as the Cultural Exchange International Fellowship of the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs and Sacatar Foundation. Karlic participated in Light Work’s Artist-in-Residence Program in June 2013.
