The Anthropocene Shifts in Visual Arts: A Case against Anthropocentrism

Abstract

Although this paper focuses largely on the Anthropocene, it is not about the local or global dangers of climate changes and escalation of pollution. It is about the diverse responses of selected artists and humanists to the problems created by the anthropocentrically structured powers geared for exploitation of biological environments and material ecologies. These artistic reactions cannot be simplified to a single thread of environmental storytelling: they are seen and interpreted as personal and moral responses to the perceptions about the old culture-nature dichotomy as well as to commodification and depletion of the biosphere. This article looks at individual reactions of artists who respond to the exploitable character of the global-wide management of environmental and technological resources; the responses to a paradigm often referred to as the “Anthropocene” or “Sixth Extinction”. The Anthropocene and cognitive sciences have been considered game changers by numerous thinkers as they can affect perceptions about anthropocentrism