Gendered Ecologies: Roadbuilding, Gold Mining, and Climate Change in the Amazon

media release: Dr. Ruth Goldstein, assistant professor of gender and women’s studies at UW-Madison, explores the socio-environmental consequences of transnational infrastructure projects and climate change along Latin America’s recently constructed highway and the emergence of indigenous women voices as stewards of the land.

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The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (MMoCA) is pleased to present Broken Spectre, a monumental exhibition by artist Richard Mosse that focuses on the human impact on the Amazon rainforest. Using unique photographic techniques, Mosse explores the ecological devastation too vast to comprehend, too minute to perceive, and too normalized to see.

The exhibition runs from November 15, 2024, to February 16, 2025, in the Main Galleries of the Museum. An opening celebration will take place on November 15, starting with a members-only preview from 5–6 PM, followed by a free artist talk by Richard Mosse at 6 PM and concluding with a public reception from 7–8 PM, with music by Emili Earhart.

Other related programming:

The Intersection of Protest and Percussion in Brazil, Thursday, December 5 • 7 PM 

Gendered Ecologies: Roadbuilding, Gold Mining, and Climate Change in the Amazon, Saturday, January 25 • 11 AM

MMoCA Cinema: The Falling Sky , Wednesday, January 29  • 7 PM 

At the center of the exhibition is Broken Spectre, a 74-minute film projected across a 70-foot span in the Main Galleries. Filmed from 2018 to 2022 in collaboration with cinematographer Trever Tweeten, it operates on multiple scales to capture the scale of destruction in the region. Fluorescent microscopic imagery captures the complexity of the Amazonian biome in scientific detail, while cinematic monochrome infrared scenes track illegal mining, logging, industrial agriculture, and Indigenous activism. The visuals shift between diptychs and quadriptychs, sometimes expanding into a single panoramic view. The imagery is accompanied by a multi-channel sound field that mixes the audio of the Amazon with a foreboding musical composition by Ben Frost.

Accompanying the film is a series of large-scale photographic prints. Utilizing technologies such as multispectral aerial cameras, ultraviolet botanical studies, and heat-sensitive analog film, Mosse documents the human impact on the flora and fauna of the Amazon. These industrial and commercial technologies are the same tools used by the industries inflicting systematic environmental damage. In the artist's hand, they bear witness to the impact of the unfolding catastrophe of global climate change at every scale.

Broken Spectre was co-commissioned by the National Gallery of Victoria, VIA Art Fund, the Westridge Foundation, and the Serpentine Galleries. Additional support was provided by Collection SVPL and Jack Shainman Gallery.

Major sponsorship for Broken Spectre at MMoCA is generously provided by Paula and David Kraemer.

Richard Mosse (b. 1980, Ireland; based in New York) documents some of the most significant humanitarian and environmental crises of our time. His work has been the subject of recent solo exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., Barbican Art Gallery in London, and the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne. Recent survey exhibitions were held at Kunsthalle Bremen (2022) and MAST Foundation, Bologna (2021). Mosse is the recipient of the 2025 Rome Prize in the visual arts, awarded by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Prix Pictet 2017, the winner of the 2014 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize, and represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale with the six-screen video installation The Enclave in 2013.

The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art is always admission-free. Its vision is to be an organization that fosters the exchange of ideas and creates experiences that will inspire a wide audience; be a nexus for the work of emerging and established regional, national, and international artists; serve as a catalyst for the continued development of a vigorous community of artists; and provide a forum that will encourage people to be challenged by, reflect on, and make connections between art and the world around them.