A Planet in Common Opening

A new exhibition by Yannos Oikonomou on the relationship between people and animals.

A clash between a cat and two crows in the artist's neighbourhood becomes the starting point for a broader investigation of the relationship between humans and nature.

In the multi-channel video installation at the core of the exhibition "A Planet in Common", Yannos Oikonomou uses his camera to observe the relentless chase of the birds and the bewilderment of the cat. An everyday incident thus becomes an occasion to confront what we take for granted about the behaviour, emotions and inner life of animals.

The Cypriot artist's new solo exhibition is presented at Diatopos Art Centre, curated by Dafni Nikita, and continues his exploration of the growing separation between humans and nature. The title, "A Planet in Common" (A common planet), reminds us that the Earth is not the exclusive property of humans, but a shared place of habitation for all living organisms.

In the work, humans are almost entirely absent from the foreground. Their presence is perceived mainly through the structures they leave behind: roads, buildings, airplanes and other interventions in the landscape. These sometimes coexist with the lives of other species and at other times bring negative consequences. The protagonists are the animals, who move within a world shaped to a large extent by humans, without, however, being confined to roles that humans have assigned to them.

According to the exhibition's approach, the chase of the cat by the two crows reveals the acuity of perception and the emotional complexity of animals. Anger, fear and the desire for revenge emerge through their reactions, while the incident hints at their ability to shape and remember stories. Together with other events recorded in the video, the scene challenges the notion that animal behaviour is determined exclusively by the instincts of survival and reproduction.

The work, of course, is addressed to human viewers. Here lies one of the exhibition's key tensions: who observes whom, and who has the right to interpret the other? The philosopher Jacques Derrida pointed out that Western philosophy and science long treated animals as objects of observation, overlooking the fact that they also look at us. This hierarchy is linked to a long tradition of human dominion over nature, which reaches back even to the biblical account of Genesis.

In Oikonomou's video installation, however, the animals return the gaze. They look directly into the lens and, by extension, at the viewer, unsettling the certainty of the human being as the sole observer and interpreter of the world. "The animal looks at us, and we are naked," writes Derrida, adding that perhaps language begins from this condition.

The exhibition also engages with the thought of Timothy Morton, who refers to animals as "nonhuman fellow beings", and with the question posed by the writer Amitav Ghosh about whether we might take seriously the idea that the Earth is inhabited by beings that act, communicate, tell stories and produce meaning.

From this perspective, "A Planet in Common" is not confined to ecological awareness, but poses a deeper question about the limits of human perception and the recognition of other forms of life as bearers of experience and meaning.