An Ecological History of Eurasian Art: Natural Resources, Aesthetic Practices, and Early Modern Globalization

Works of art are repositories of environmental knowledge.

Paintings, sculptures, and artifacts preserve material evidence of the use of natural resources like mineral pigments, plant-based dyes, and precious metals, and contribute to a visual archive of human interaction with nature by providing pictorial records of mining and deforestation.

ECOART aims to rewrite art history as a history of ecological interconnections and prove that aesthetic practices were conditioned by environmental circumstances by examining the artistic use and visual representation of geographical, geological, botanical, zoological, and climatic resources across Eurasia, a space dominated by European and Chinese economic spheres of influence, in an era of early modern globalization from 1500 to 1800.

The project investigates six key artistic sites with a focus on the Global South, an area still affected by the colonial exploitation of resources – the Indian region of Gujarat and the port cities of Manila in the Philippines, Jakarta in Indonesia, Guangzhou in China, Yangon in Myanmar, and Amsterdam in the Netherlands – with three objectives: 1. to analyze works of art as early modern repositories of environmental knowledge; 2. to reconstruct local ecologies of art and artisanship in the Global South in relation to trade and colonial exploitation; and 3. to make visible transcultural models of sustainability and creative reuse across early modern Eurasia.

Digital mapping will demonstrate linkages between sites of artistic activity, resource extraction, and trade via overland and maritime connections.

Through a geographic focus on under-researched regions of the Global South, and its transcultural and comparative methodology, ECOART will contribute to the decolonization of art history, provide theoretical insights into circular economies and the ecology of art, and contribute key historical information to an interdisciplinary understanding of natural resource conflicts during the Anthropocene.