Unsettling Matter, Gaining Ground

Unsettling Matter, Gaining Ground brings together artworks from Carnegie Museum of Art’s collection alongside contemporary projects and new commissions to narrate the complex stories of how fossil fuel economies have been produced and upheld; whom they have excluded and left vulnerable; and how they have shaped and disrupted cities, communities, and ecologies.

Extending to multiple geographies across the United States and returning to our immediate context in Western Pennsylvania thousands of feet below our ground, works in this exhibition look to the very sites where processes of extraction materialize. Abundant in anthracite and bituminous coal, the mines of Pennsylvania fueled the proverbial Second Industrial Revolution of the late 19th century. With gas trapped in the sedimentary rock of the Marcellus Shale—stretching from the Allegheny Plateau to the northern Appalachian Basin—the region becomes once again a node in the intimately connected global energy networks.

The exhibition is anchored in the history of Carnegie Museum of Art’s collection. Traces of histories and processes of splitting subterranean matter, of networks of material and power production and distribution, and architectures of transforming the earth live in the institution’s archive and memory. These include the iconic Continuous Miner series of paintings and prints as well as architectural drawings of mining infrastructures developed by the Pittsburgh Coal Wash Co. In tandem, seven projects by contemporary artists, architects, and collectives chart avenues for creatively contending with extractive forces in the context of our contemporary urgency. Within their multiplicity, a common thread weaves these projects together. From raising awareness and recording the struggles of frontline communities to providing a space to mourn and diligently mapping destruction, these new commissions offer aesthetic, emotional, and cognitive tools for coexisting on a warming, scarcer, and more unstable planet.

Public program 
On the occasion of Unsettling Matter, Gaining Ground, Carnegie Museum of Art is hosting a two-day public program taking place throughout the museum that expands upon the conceptual frameworks underpinning the artistic proposals in the exhibition. The program consists of a dynamic mix of presentation formats—ranging from individual talks and panel conversations to a musical performance and gallery walkthroughs—that invite various publics to convene and reflect together upon the exhibition and provide further insights into the possibility of collectively existing on the planet. 

Participants include artists featured in the exhibition: Cooking Sections, Eliza Evans, Not An Alternative, Pep Aviles and Laia Celma, and Imani Jacqueline Brown; anthropologist and scholar Gökçe Günel; the musical ensemble Les Cenelles; environmental lawyer Mari Margil, artist and environmental activist Aviva Rahmani, among others. 

Free and open to the public, click here to register. 

Curatorial team
Unsettling Matter, Gaining Ground is co-organized by Theodossis Issaias, associate curator, Heinz Architectural Center, and Ala Tannir, curatorial research fellow, Heinz Architectural Center.

Participating artists 
Imani Jacqueline Brown in collaboration with Les Cenelles, Tony Buba, Laia Celma and Pep Avilés, Cooking Sections, Eliza Evans, Walter J. Hood, Not An Alternative, from Carnegie Museum of Art’s collection—Antonio Frasconi, Roberto Matta, Walter Tandy Murch, Ben Shahn, Saul Steinberg, Hedda Sterne, Rufino Tamayo—The Continuous Miner Series (1954), Janssen and Cocken, Pittsburgh Coal Washer Co., Samuel Yellin