Heron | Curated Collection II
The second in our series of Curated Collections, 'Heron' brings together artists working across painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture and assemblage. Taking inspiration from a letter written in 1997 by art critic and writer John Berger to Subcomandante Marcos, the leader of the Zapatista movement in Mexico, the exhibition explores the heron as a metaphor for humanity's bond with nature and itself.
'The Herons' is amongst a series of letters exchanged between Berger and Subcomandante Marcos, in which Berger expresses his support for the Zapatistas and their fight for indigenous rights and land autonomy, responding to Mexico joining the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). NAFTA led to mass unemployment in Mexico’s agricultural sector due to heavily subsidised US corn imports, resulting in widespread poverty, mass migration to the the USA and environmental degradation. Sharing the view that neoliberalism was eroding human rights and, at the same time, destroying the planet, Berger saw the Zapatista movement as an emblem of "resistance against the inhumanity of the new world economic order”.
In the letter, Berger describes a solitary heron that returns every spring to a secluded lake, which comes to serve as a motif for the Zapatistas. It speaks to the quiet strength and the clandestine nature of the Zapatista movement and their vision of an idealised future - one where they can live freely, free of violence and oppression, where communities live in harmony with nature, stewarding the land, not exploiting it.
Berger referenced herons in other writings. For him, they stood for quiet observation and the act of seeing itself, embodying a stillness and awareness that stood separate from the noise of modern day living. He invited the reader to slow down to the “beat of the heron’s wings”. Patiently waiting, poised in the murky pond, the heron reminds us that even in the face of overwhelming odds, there is strength in reflection and quiet action.
