Miriam Appetito

From the gentle earth mounds of Ana Mendieta to the regenerative gardens of Mary Mattingly, environmental art frequently employs acts of nurturing. These works value process over product, community over ego, decay over permanence. They mirror the rhythms of seasons, the cycles of birth and death, and the tactile labor of sustaining life. In a world that undervalues care ,especially when performed by women, femmes, or racialized bodies — this turn toward slow, caring art can be political....

In many mainstream narratives, environmental art is still overwhelmingly framed through a Western, often Euro-American lens: one rooted in post-industrial critique, aestheticized landscape interventions, and conceptual provocations. But long before "eco-art" became a contemporary genre, Indigenous communities across the globe were cultivating deep, reciprocal relationships with the land , relationships based not on extraction, but on reverence, regeneration, and knowledge passed down over...