Ithra’s Terra Exhibit
Go on an environmental adventure of a lifetime at Ithra’s new Terra exhibition
Flying with flamingos, climbing trees with chimps, or exploring coral reefs and mangroves, Terra is education as adventure.
We use credit cards to buy food, but did you know that the average human consumes the equivalent of a credit card of microplastics every week? Or that organic cotton production produces 50 times less water pollution than regular cotton? Can you believe that 450-gram steak you enjoyed last night required the equivalent of 14,000 bottles of fresh water? Well, believe it. The animal itself only drank about 160 liters of water per kilogram, but when you add the water used to grow the food it ate, that number leaps to over 15,000 liters.
Art exhibit with a difference
Welcome to the new exhibition, Terra, by Arcadia Earth currently being held at the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture — Ithra.
Terra is an art exhibit featuring installations with virtual and extended reality experiences created to reimagine environmental sustainability and how we can impact the health and future of our planet. Focusing on individual empowerment, Terra uses relatable information to illustrate how our simple actions can make each of us part of a global solution.
Elegant, stunning installations
No less fascinating than it is informative, Terra is, above all, an elegant and visually stunning showcase of installations developed by noted artists from around the world using upcycled and reusable materials.
Visitors are greeted to Terra by South African Daniel Popper’s fantastical gate of repurposed wood and greenery in the form of two hands — each larger than a person — outstretched in welcome.
A particularly visually exciting work is the Rainbow Cave by the New York-based artist Basia Goszczynska. Inspired by Plato’s Allegory of the Cave (where your reality is a matter of the information you perceive), the work is an LED-lighted grotto created from tens of thousands of discarded plastic bags — the stuff that, washed up on beaches or discarded by the side of the road, becomes the microplastics that are now so prevalent in our food chain.
A whole new experience
Endorsed by Jane Goodall, Wild Immersion is the world’s first 360° virtual reality wildlife reserve. It’s one thing to see pictures or videos of animals like lions, elephants and zebras, but it’s a whole new experience to be able to look at them up close.
The goal of Terra is to raise public awareness about nature conservation challenges — air and water quality, biodiversity and sustainability — and yet the public experience of this elegant exhibition is incredibly fun and exciting. Flying with flamingos, climbing trees with chimps, or exploring coral reefs and mangroves, Terra is education as adventure.
The exhibit will be featured at Ithra through September.