Maja and Reuben Fowkes

Maja and Reuben Fowkes are curators and art historians whose work focuses on the theory and aesthetics of East European art from the art production of the socialist era to contemporary artistic practices. Their interests in the field of art and ecology are expressed through publications, research and curatorial projects that have explored environmental art history under socialism, visual cultures of the Anthropocene, the position of art within environmental humanities, and the intersections of contemporary art with plants, animals, rewilding, the biosphere, as well as beyond-human anthropology.

They are co-directors of the Translocal Institute for Contemporary Art, a centre for transnational research into East European art and ecology based in Budapest that operates across the disciplinary boundaries of art history, contemporary art and ecological thought.

Their engagement with art and ecology has resulted in a body of work related to sustainability and contemporary art, starting with the 2006 Symposium on Sustainability and Contemporary Art at Central European University Budapest, which continued annually. An interview with Maja and Reuben Fowkes about their work on issues of sustainability and contemporary art was published in summer 2009 in Antennae Journal.

Maja Fowkes is the author of The Green Bloc: Neo-avant-garde Art and Ecology under Socialism (2015).

Their work within the field of environmental art history has included a chapter entitled 'Cracks in the Planet: Geo-ecological Matter in East European Art,' in Extending the Dialogue and an article on 'The Primeval Cosmic River and its Ecological Realities: On the curatorial project Danube River School (2013-2015),' in the journal Geohumanities.

Interviews about their recent publications and work on the issue of art in the Anthropocene appeared on Mezosfera and the Anthropocene Index.

Their contribution to the edited volume Curating Subjects III – Curating Research (2014) was a chapter on ‘Renewing the Curatorial Refrain: Sustainable Research in Contemporary Art.’

Their Danube River School project between 2013 and 2015 brought together artists, writers, environmental historians and anthropologists for a series of symposiums, exhibitions and excursions into wilderness and resulted in the publication River Ecologies: Contemporary Art and Environmental Humanities on the Danube (2015),

At Translocal Institute between 2014 and 2016 they ran a reading group on Art in the Age of the Anthropocene through the Experimental Reading Room.

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