Easthaus is excited to announce their ensuing exhibition titled, Grassroots, compiling the work from artists Corey Brown, Zeppelin Dufour, Thomas Rutigliano, Ryer Spann & Ryan Swedenborg. Engaging with the title's multiform of meanings, Grassroots origins hold both societal and ecological implications. Thus, inundating the work with finding a nuance that depicts our natural [or dreamlike] ecological landscapes or focuses on cultural and societal disruptions, using figuration as a vehicle for such change. Together, these modalities ultimately relate to the world that we inhabit amongst the people we cohabitate with grounding, Grassroots, in pointing towards an all-important foundation to unify human/nature at-oneness through bottom-up initiatives. Participating artists present the seemingly disparate, to call us towards action; or as unified works, easing us into a utopian refuge. Revealing, either the harmony of pure existence or laying bare the shortcomings of contemporary living. 

In a time where dismantling, de-regulation, denying, and dehumanization have solidified our country's imperialist baseline, the invitation towards a grassroots movement is crucial in reacting to the abundance of social injustices and ecological misfortunes that we face. We are shown, now more than ever, the importance of an all encompassing grassroots embodiment in our contemporary culture. Where DIY spaces become filled with like-minded individuals, merging together to become the change that cherishes humanity and puts the collective voice first. As Marianne Williamson notes in, The Healing of America, in our current societal plight shows that America is behind the times, “seeking to undo the damages we have suffered by means of the same dialect that created them.” In a grassroot movement the idea of undoing damage is no longer a task stage set in an Odyssian Saga leading us awry. Instead, in the battles against antagonistic suitors, progressive innovation places grassroot organization as a practice parallel to a healing ritual; one that stokes the flames of positive change in a society whose sole concern has been historically centered around dominion and profits.

But how do we challenge the status quo? How do we start to look at what is happening around us and begin to see the world differently? To begin to look at things, the people, the landscapes, the structures holding us in complete stagnation — to the point of becoming regressive — and begin to see them as they are; in their immense shortcomings and their potential of overwhelming beauty. It is often a helpless feeling as a constituent of the American population with a “fractured American psyche” set in a “fractured state of the world around us.”, yet it does not have to be this way. It is  most apparent — today — to stand up for what you believe in as firmly as the roots found beneath our feet have settled deep into our Earth to sustain life. To stand alongside one another urging for progressive change. As Adrian Smith, Mariano Fressoli and Hernán Thomas most beautifully notes in their 2014 article, Grassroots Innovation Movements: Challenges and Contributions, “... to address issues of poverty, social inclusion and sustainability, the knowledges produced by grassroots innovation movements should be taken seriously; not as a blueprint for the future, but rather as a resource for debating and constructing different pathways to sustainable futures. Our pathway to more sustainable futures must not be decades away, four years out, in a month's time; our pathway towards paradise must be in the present. It must be now, yesterday has already passed and tomorrow is simply too late.

It is in our orbits that we have understood the power we hold; the power our voice holds in creative expression. The power to be able to forge new pathways; to breathe new life into our possible futures. As artists, it is our leading knowledge in ethics, morality, and empathy that heals souls. It is our ability to call out injustices which shows that our jobs as creatives never were solely about aesthetics. We must plant our feet, become entangled with the roots of our Earth and brave this exhausting sojourn that we have been set upon as a unified grassroot coalition. We shall wholefully reside hand in hand with our brothers and sisters in the pursuit of living better. To understand this is a time where passivity cannot exist, where activism must radiate in our veins and fire through our nerves. It is imperative, as the civilizations cultural contributors, to nurture humanity and our ecosystems that will undoubtedly surpass us. We must remain steadfast in our midst of social and ecological upheavals. To organize, find community, to practice radical optimism, to be creative; we must thrust art into the world even more so than before. We must find ways to allow for a bottom-up grassroot movement to thrive, not only in art but in the very immediate world in which we live; no longer can a future exist that attempts to leave us all behind.

As an aside, when writing this text, I found a book I had long forgotten I had stashed away, Brotherly & Other Loves by Kala Ladenheim. I opened up to a page I had marked months prior and in this section, “The Burial of Abraham [Gen. 25 : 9]”, I am struck with the dialogue I had rediscovered. 

Ishmael: 	You lack power.

		Your men follow you for rules, not love.

Isaac:		You cast yourself out

		beyond my prohibitions. Your followers

		are hairy, wild, uncouth.

		Like you they are escaped slaves,

		beasts, stinking.

Ishmael:	Brother, brother,

		we are sharing salt

		tears for our mutual tyrant.

In the face of disparaging language from Isaac, Ishmael adorns himself with radical language of HOPE - an understanding of circumstances that are dire but such conditions link us together in solidarity. As Ishmael expresses his discontent with the lineage of righteousness; Brown and Dufour show - through the surreal, humour, whimsical and the absurd - that we are all brothers, sharing salt tears under a mutual tyrant dodging the arrows from volley fire and in our city parks next to pissing cans. As Isaac is expressing his superiority, donning authoritative rhetoric, Swedenborg surplants authority with the glister of a budding utopia that is grounded in the gratefulness of nature. Urging us to cast a wistful glance at our surrounding ecosystems. As the tension builds between Ishmael and Isaac, Rutigliano removes us entirely from a singular moment of tension asking us to embark through the winding hills of our mind palace. Conversely, Spann forces us to confront the hypnotic tension calling for us to grapple with our relationship to the unease and vulnerabilities we feel and find in our immediate environments. 

In some way, each of the artists have spoken to you, to I, to the likes of humanity.