Laura Huertas Millán / Sarker Protick
The realisation that living and doing business under global capitalism is irreversibly changing the earth's ecosystem has shaken many conventional ideas about nature. The effects of the climate crisis show that nature in the 21st century is no longer ‘natural’, but is characterised in every respect by human activity.
Image gallery
El Laberinto, 2018, Film Still
Para la Coca, 2024, Film Still
Awngar, 2024
Laura Huertas Millán / Sarker Protick
So how do people today look at a nature whose condition is inextricably interwoven with the social and political characteristics of their lifestyles?
Together with the Crespo Foundation, C/O Berlin will be awarding the After Nature Prize 2024 from 2024. The prize, which is awarded annually to two individuals or groups with an advanced exhibition and publication practice aged 35 and over, enables the realisation of new projects on the theme of ‘Photography after Nature’.
The first prizewinners are Laura Huertas Millán (*1983, Colombia) and Sarker Protick (*1986, Bangladesh).
In their two award-winning projects, Laura Huertas Millán (*1983, Colombia) and Sarker Protick (*1986, Bangladesh) examine from different perspectives and geographical contexts how colonial structures continue to shape the modern relationship with nature to this day. Both share a deep interest in history and the origins of our relationship to the world. By merging the historical and the contemporary, they focus on global contexts and draw the audience's attention to the visual mechanisms at work when ideas of nature are manifested in photography and visual media.
Laura Huertas Millán . Curanderxs
In addition to the multi-channel projection of the same name, which was newly produced as part of the After Nature Prize 2024, the exhibition Curanderxs (Spanish for healers) presents two further video installations by the artist.
Hardly any other plant is as controversial as the coca plant. Since 2018, Colombian filmmaker Laura Huertas Millán has been focussing on the coca plant in her work.
Based on the first prohibition of the plant during the Spanish colonisation of Latin America, Huertas Millán develops a speculative narrative in her new work, at the centre of which is a group of female characters who secretly distributed coca leaves in the 17th century.
In the Western world, coca is mainly associated with the narcotic cocaine, which was first produced in Europe in the 19th century and gave rise to a violent system of drug trafficking and abuse. The fact that the plant has a cultural and spiritual significance for the indigenous population of the Andean region due to its healing and stimulating effects points to a gap in the historiography, which is not least due to the Western hegemony of knowledge.
Sarker Protick . অঙ্গার . Awngar
Bangladeshi photographer Sarker Protick's exhibition অঙ্গার . Awngar also spans the arc between different temporalities. Looking at the historical territory of Bengal, which today extends across India and Bangladesh, he reveals the connection between the colonial history of the Indian subcontinent and the ongoing exploitation of the people and ecosystems living there.
His photographic investigation resembles field research. Like many of his works,অঙ্গার . Awngar is a long-term project. The focus is on the connection between the expansion of railway connections and coal mining in the 19th century under the colonial rule of the British Empire.
For Awngar, Protick travelled to various places in India and Bangladesh, for example to Narayankuri, West Bengal, where one of India's oldest mines is located. Or to the 1.6 kilometre long Hardinge Bridge railway bridge - a prestigious project that was built between 1910 and 1915 and spans the Padma River in Bangladesh. To this day, it is an essential part of the rail transport infrastructure and therefore crucial for the mobility of workers and the transport of export goods.
At the same time, this infrastructure is a reminder of the brutal history of the division of Bengal.
Protick's photographs show dystopian coalfields surrounded by rubble and clouds of dust, disused railway lines leading to nowhere, and ruins and relics of late capitalism reminiscent of once flourishing industries. His carefully thought-out, minimalist compositions open our eyes to deserted spaces and landscapes.
The double exhibition will be on show for the first time from 14 Sep 2024 - 23 Jan 2025 at C/O Berlin in the Amerika Haus.
It will be accompanied by a publication.
Additional information
Price info: Visitors of the Museum of Photography and the Helmut Newton Foundation receive a discount of 2,00 €, respectively 1,00 € (for the reduced ticket) on the day of validity of their ticket.
Price: €12.00
Reduced price: €6.00
Reduced price info: Children and young people up to the age of 18 are admitted free of charge.
