The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish, Edited by Lucia Pietroiusti and Filipa Ramos, Hatje Cantz + Serpentine

The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish

Edited by Lucia Pietroiusti and Filipa Ramos

Hatje Cantz + Serpentine

The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish

Edited by Lucia Pietroiusti and Filipa Ramos

Hatje Cantz + Serpentine

Serpentine announces the launch of The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish, a book edited by Lucia Pietroiusti, Head of Serpentine Ecologies and curator and lecturer at the Academy of Art and Design of Basel Filipa Ramos. The launch event of the publication, which includes 100 contributors across the arts and sciences, will take place in London at the Royal College of Art on 27th October 2025.

 

The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish is a publication that brings together interventions across the arts, the humanities and the sciences to investigate the history and cutting-edge of more-than-human theories, from animal, plant and fungal intelligence, consciousness and affect, machine sentience and interspecies communication. This publication is an important landmark in Serpentine’s long-term research project of the same name, begun in 2018 to inaugurate Serpentine’s General Ecology project.

 

The publication includes original conversations, essays, interviews, meditations, poems and artwork representations by 100 of the most celebrated environmental thinkers and creatives across disciplines – anthropologists, artists, biologists, ecologists, gardeners, musicians, philosophers, theologians and more, including Sophia Al-Maria, Ted Chiang, Emanuele Coccia, Peter Gabriel, Tim Ingold, Elizabeth A. Povinelli and Karrabing Film Collective, Maria Puig de la Bellacasa, Himali Singh Soin, Merlin Sheldrake, Superflex, Jenna Sutela, Anna L. Tsing, Chris Watson and many more.

 

The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish is arranged in five chapters. The first, titled Worlds, focuses on principles of symbiosis and coevolution, anthropological approaches to more-than-human beings; and radical reimaginings of the planet. The second, Beings, presents more-than-human beings as collaborators, co-thinkers, and interlocutors – from the sound of a forest stretching and shifting to the swarming messiness of the soil, through to the body language of animals. The third, entitled Grounds, hosts debates concerning more-than-human and planetary life within the social and political entanglements of anthropocentrism, and calls for more-than-human and environmental practices of justice. Odes, the fourth chapter, brings to the fore an understanding of mythology, storytelling, and meaning-making as planetary manifestations, tracing human/more-than-human relations across deep time. In Oracles, the book’s closing chapter, the spiritual realm and advanced technologies (human and non-human) meet at the porous and uncertain edges of planetary computation and complexity.

 

Publication launches are planned internationally throughout 2025, including at IMMA Dublin on 14th September and then a launch at the Royal College of Art, London, on October 27th 2025, which will feature a Serpentine Cinema programme as well as the presentation of Filipa Ramos’ latest monograph, The Artist as Ecologist (London: Lund Humphreys, October 2025), which discusses the ways in which contemporary artists embrace practices of environmentalism. The London event will include a lecture performance by Elizabeth A. Povinelli. The first launch of the publication took place at E-WERK Luckenwalde, Germany as part of the festival’s sixth iteration, subtitled Love and Lament, and presented by Schering Stiftung, Berlin.

 

Art Direction by Giles Round. Contributors: Andrew Adamatzky; Yussef Agbo-Ola/Olaniyi Studio; Sophia Al-Maria; Allora & Calzadilla; Saelia Aparicio; Chloe Aridjis; Heather Barnett; Antoine Bertin; Lynne Boddy; Elizabeth-Jane Burnett; Vivian Caccuri; Mariana Caló & Francisco Queimadela; Federico Campagna; Teresa Castro; Alex Cecchetti; Vint Cerf; Ted Chiang; Sean Cho A.; Nicola Clayton; Emanuele Coccia; Revital Cohen; & Tuur Van Balen; The Coven Intelligence Program; Marisol de la Cadena; Michela de Mattei; Onome Ekeh; Cru Encarnação; James Fairhead; Adham Faramawy; Simone Forti; Claire Filmon; Rosalind Fowler; Peter Gabriel; Elaine Gan; Jay Gao; Sabine Hauert; Daisy Hildyard; Amy Hollywood; Hylozoic/Desires (Himali Singh Soin & David Soin Tappeser); Tim Ingold; Derek Jarman; Alex Jordan; Karrabing Film Collective; Leah Kelly; Asim Khan; Kapwani Kiwanga; Dominique Knowles; Bettina Korek; Simone Kotva; Daisy Lafarge; Hannah Landecker; Yasmeen Lari; Long Litt Woon; Annea Lockwood; Thandi Loewenson; Miranda Lowe; Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe; Marcos Lutyens; Carlos Magdalena; Michael Marder; Alex McBratney; Natasha Myers; Nahum; Rasmus Nielsen/ SUPERFLEX; Hatis Noit; Hans Ulrich Obrist; Angelica Patterson; Lucia Pietroiusti; Elizabeth A. Povinelli; Maria Puig de la Bellacasa; Filipa Ramos; Asad Raza; Diana Reiss; Tabita Rezaire; Ben Rivers; Giles Round; Merlin Sheldrake; Kostas Stasinopoulos; Jenna Sutela; bones tan jones; Phoebe Tickell; Anaïs Tondeur & Germain Meulemans; Laurence Totelin; Anna L. Tsing; Oula A. Valkeapäa & Leena Valkeapäa; Sumayya Vally; Kim Walker; Chris Watson; Elvia Wilk; Rain Wu & Mariana Sanchez Salvador.

 

Published by Hatje Cantz, The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish is distributed worldwide as well as on Serpentine’s website.

The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish 

History of the programme

The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish began as a multi-year symposium, podcast and research project investigating consciousness and intelligence across species and beings and was launched in 2018 at the London Zoo. Since 2018, it has welcomed over 10,000 audience members and viewers and been a pioneer in environmental and ecological convenings.

 

2018 at the London Zoo: PART 1 LANGUAGE: On interspecies communications, with Ted Chiang, Vint Cerf, Peter Gabriel and more.

 

2018 at Ambika P3: we have never been one: On Gaia theory and micro-organisms, with Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Sophia Al-Maria and more.

 

2019 at EartH Hackney: with plants: on plant consciousness, plant intelligence and communication with the vegetal world, with Tabita Rezaire, Chris Watson and more.

2020 online: the understory of the understory: on land, earth, soil, fungi, with Elizabeth A. Povinelli and Merlin Sheldrake and more. This event marked the launch of Sheldrake’s landmark publication, Entangled Life.

 

2022, Galeria da Biodiversidade, Porto, Portugal: The Shape of a Circle in the Dream of a Fish: on dreams in the non-human world, with Alex Jordan, Onome Ekeh, Federico Campagna and more.

2025, E-WERK Luckenwalde/Schering Stiftung: The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish: Love and Lament: on grief and intimacy in a more-than-human world, with Aslak Aamot Helm, Antoine Bertin, Kapwani Kiwanga, Michael Ohl, Alejandra Pombo Su, Elizabeth Povinelli, Claudia Rankine, Asad Raza, Giles Round, Jenna Sutela, Jovana Maksic, Staci Bu Shea and Revital Cohen & Tuur Van Balen.

 

In addition, releases on Serpentine Podcast’s series: “On General Ecology” and collaborations with renowned environmental podcast Future Ecologies brought together some 60,000 listeners to dive deeper into the ideas and experimentations of the series.

About Serpentine Ecologies

Since 2014’s Extinction Marathon with artist Gustav Metzger, Serpentine has been at the forefront of environmental action and thought. Since the establishment of the General Ecology project in 2018,  the Ecologies initiatives nurture Serpentine’s ongoing engagement with ecology, climate breakdown, more-than-human consciousness, environmental justice and complexity in a changing world. Stretching across all of Serpentine’s activities, infrastructures and networks, Serpentine Ecologies takes a speculative and active stance towards embedding alternative narratives and deep ecological principles into the everyday. Ecologies’ initiatives manifested with projects such as Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes: The British East India Company on Trial in April 2025, Back to Earth, (2020- 2022), Infinite Ecologies Marathon in 2023, and Daisy Ginsberg’s Pollinator Pathmaker in Kensington Gardens among many other projects. As part of Serpentine’s Back to Earth project, Serpentine and Penguin Press published 140 Artists’ Ideas for Planet Earth, a book inviting artists to re-think the climate emergency.

SERPENTINE GALLERIES

www.serpentinegalleries.org

Judy Chicago: Revelations @ Serpentine, London - Judy Chicago largest solo presentation in a London institution

Judy Chicago: Revelations

Serpentine Galleries, London

23 May – 1 September 2024

Serpentine presents Revelations, an exhibition of trailblazing artist, author, educator, cultural historian and feminist JUDY CHICAGO (b. 1939, Chicago, USA); lives and works in New Mexico, USA). Named as one of Time Magazine's most influential people in 2018, she has garnered an enduring stature. Born Judy Cohen, and know biefly after her first marriage as Judy Gerowitz, Judy Chicago attented the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of California, Los Angeles. In 1970, the artist adopted the surname 'chicago' and initiated the United States' first Feminist Art Programme at California State University, Fresno. The exhibition Revelations, on view at Serpentine North, is Judy Chicago’s largest solo presentation in a London institution.

Judy Chicago came to prominence in the late 1960s when she challenged the male-dominated landscape of the art world by making work that was boldly from a woman’s perspective. An artistic polymath, Judy Chicago’s work is defined by a commitment to craft and experimentation, either through her choice of subject matter or the method and materials she employs.

Throughout her six-decade career, Judy Chicago has contested the absence and erasure of women in the Western cultural canon, developing a distinctive visual language that gives visibility to their experiences. To this aim, Judy Chicago has produced both individual and collaborative projects that grappled with themes of birth and creation, the social construct of masculinity, her Jewish identity, notions of power and powerlessness, extinction, and expressed her longstanding concern for climate justice.

Judy Chicago: Revelations charts the full arc of Judy Chicago’s career with a specific focus on drawing, highlighting rarely seen works. Several immersive, multi-media elements, including an AR app, a video recording booth, and other audio-visual components, set this show apart from previous surveys of Judy  Chicago’s work. With never-before-seen sketchbooks, films and slides, video interviews of participants from The Dinner Party (1974–79), audio recordings, and a guided tour of The Dinner Party by Judy  Chicago herself, this novel approach to exhibiting Judy Chicago’s work makes the artist’s presence felt throughout the gallery.

The exhibition takes its name from an unknown illuminated manuscript Judy Chicago penned in the early 1970s which will be published for the first time in conjunction with the exhibition by Serpentine and Thames & Hudson. Titled Revelations, this visionary work is a radical retelling of human history recovering some of the stories of women that society sought to erase, and one that Judy Chicago never imagined would be published in her lifetime. Audio excerpts from the book can be heard in each of the galleries through an accompanying audio guide, seamlessly creating a link between visual art and written word that has occupied the artist’s practice since the 1970s.

"Revelations, both the exhibition and book, expresses my lifelong commitment to gender equality and my deeply held belief that people must come together to change the patriarchal paradigm, which–at this point in history–has become lethal to all creatures, human and nonhuman, as well as to the planet" - Judy Chicago

Organised thematically and inspired by the chapters of the manuscript as its framework, the exhibition opens with In the Beginning (1982) which measures a staggering nine metres in length. Executed in Judy Chicago's signature Prismacolor pencils, the work reimagines the Genesis creation myth from a female perspective. As a benchmark representation of Judy Chicago's foundational philosophy, In the Beginning attempts to dismantle patriarchal structures but also draws on the ways in which feminism intersects with ecology, making this the perfect work to open both the exhibition and accompanying manuscript, which also serves as the exhibition's catalogue.

In the mid-1960s, Judy Chicago developed a significant body of abstract and minimalist drawings, paintings and sculptures that explored colour and form. Revelations brings together a focused sélection of works on paper from this period. By the late 1960s and 1970s, Judy Chicago began to expand on what she termed 'central-core' imagery whilst also developing her expertise in the male-dominated discipline of pyrotechnies. Works such as The Great Ladies Transforming Themselves into Butterflies (1973) and Peeling Back (1974} combine text and image and explicitly reflect on her experience of being "a woman, with a woman's body and a woman's point of view." An immersive video installation of footage from Judy Chicago's celebrated site-specific performances, Atmospheres (1968-74), that combined coloured smokes and fireworks is presented in one of the historic powder rooms of Serpentine North. As one of several digital and online experiences presented in the exhibition, visitors are also encouraged to interact with Rainbow AR (2020), a free downloadable app commissioned by LAS Art Foundation, Berlin, Germany, which allows visitors to create their own smoke pieces.

One gallery draws on the significance of Judy Chicago's monumental installation The Dinner Party that celebrates and symbolises the heritage and achievements of 1038 women. Here, rarely seen drawings, studies and sketchbooks reveal the working process and components that led to this installation, now permanently housed at Brooklyn Museum, NY. Interviews with luminaries such as Maria Grazia Chiuri, Kevin Kwan, Roxane Gay and Massimiliano Gioni contextualise the relevance of The Dinner Party today.

Also featured in the exhibition is Judy Chicago's séries, the Birth Project (1980-85), for which the artist studied creation myths from numerous cultures to chart history's transition from matriarchal to patriarchal societies. Struck by the lack of imagery related to the subject of birth in Western art, she collaborated with over 150 needleworkers who translated her drawings, paintings and designs into tapestries, petit points, crochets and more. Central to these works is the image of the Goddess figure which has been reworked across Judy Chicago's career to present the idea of 'the divine' being female.

Whilst still engaged with Birth Project, Judy Chicago explored the cultural construction of gender and masculinity. Drawing on her continued commitment to challenging the patriarchal structures that govern society, Prismacolor studies and paintings on Belgian linen covered cavasses from PowerPlay (1982-87) highlight how the artist appropriated and reversed the male gaze. In a new drawing made especially for the manuscript, And God Created Life (2023) Judy Chicago seeks to challenge the conception of God as male and instead presents a figure that sits beyond the racial and binary gender spectrum.

The exhibition also highlights Judy Chicago's enthusiastic interest in the relationship between ecological justice and feminism. Among the works presented are a selection of mixed média drawings from the séries Thinking About Trees (1993-96) as well as studies from The End: A Meditation on Death and Extinction (2015-16) that reflect on the plight of animals. Stranded (2013), depicting a polar bear, was the subject of #CreateArtforEarth, an ongoing global campaign that brought together Judy Chicago with the artist Swoon, Jane Fonda and her environmental initiative Pire Drill Friday. Alongside other partners, this project encouraged individuals to submit art or messages that respond to the climate crisis and inspire action for protecting our planet. For Revelations, visitors are invited to continue contributing to the global campaign. This is one of three ways that people Worldwide can collaborate with the artist to create change via digital projects including the most recently conceived participatory project in the exhibition, What If Women Ruled the World? (2022).

What if Women Ruled the World? was developed in close collaboration with Pussy Riot founding member Nadya Tolokonnikova, and DMINTI (a leader in the industry that curates, produces, and positions innovative works and experiences at the intersection of art and technology). The project was first imagined in 1977 and realised for Dior's Spring-Summer 2020 Haute Couture show at the invitation of the fashion house's first female creative director, Maria Grazia Chiuri. Visitors are invited to enter a participatory booth to provide a video response to a series of questions. Each response becomes part of a growing international archive that is underpinned by a proof of participation token powered by Tezos, the open source project and a scalable, energy efficient, public blockchain chosen by artists across the world for their creative projects. This is the latest project in the multi-year partnership between the Tezos Foundation and Serpentine which celebrates the Serpentine Arts Technologies Team's endeavors to foster artist-led blockchain projects and educate the public, alongside the Tezos ecosystem's dedication to innovation and creativity in the arts and culture sector.

Revelations is curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director; and Chris Bayley, Associate Exhibitions Curator; with Liz Stumpf, Assistant Exhibitions Curator; and produced by Halime Özdemir-Larusso, Production Manager.

Judy Chicago: Revelations 

Co-published by Serpentine and Thames & Hudson

Alongside the illuminated manuscript, the publication features an introduction by Judy Chicago as well as contributions from Serpentine Associate Exhibitions Curator Chris Bayley and scholar Martha Easton whose research centres on illuminated manuscripts, gender and medievalism. It also includes a conversation between Judy Chicago and Serpentine's Artistic Director Hans Ulrich Obrist that traces the beginnings of Revelations and the ways in which it, unbeknownst to Judy Chicago until recently, was foundational to the work she would conceive over the following four decades. It is designed by Jessica Fleischmann (Still Room) and Phil Kovacevich.

Judy Chicago: Revelations is published in hardback by Thames & Hudson in collaboration with Serpentine and on sale in the UK on 30 May 2024 and in the US on 18 June 2024.

 

Limited Edition: To celebrate the exhibition, a special Judy Chicago Limited Edition will be available via the Serpentine Shop. All proceeds directly support the Serpentine's Exhibition, Architecture, Design, Education and Digital programmes.

SERPENTINE Galleries London

Kensington Gardens, London W2 3XA

www.serpentinegalleries.org