Timur Si-Qin's work takes form through diverse media and creates a new kind of environmental art. It challenges common notions of organic vs synthetic, natural vs cultural, human vs nonhuman, and other dualities at the heart of Western consciousness.

Si-Qin's work in the exhibition presents a temple cave that connects the biotopes and organisms of the botanical gardens to a parallel landscape. Through a portal within the temple, the viewer is invited to enter a virtual sacred locus of contemplation. The work is part of Si-Qin's long-term meta-project New Peace – a proposal introducing a new secular faith in the face of climate change, global pandemics, and biodiversity collapse. Drawing on the concept of religions as an adaptive system of meaning for collective action, New Peace recognizes the central spiritual value of nature, and states that only through this type of deep cultural shift, the impacts of climate change may be mitigated.

Timur Si-Qin is a New York-based artist of German and Mongolian-Chinese descent who grew up in Berlin, Beijing, and in the American Southwest. Recent exhibitions include Von Ammon Co., Washington D.C.; Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art 2; the 2019 Asian Art Biennale, Bangladesh; the 5th Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art; UCCA, Beidaihe; Spazio Maiocchi, Milan; The High Line, New York; and Magician Space, Beijing.

Courtesy of the artist and Société, Berlin