By Gaby Messino

micha cárdenas, an interdisciplinary and multimedia artist, is sounding the warning about climate catastrophe tipping points in her new high-profile exhibition Probability Engine: Atlantic Overturning, which opened on October 5 at Nuit Blanche, Toronto’s all-night celebration of contemporary art.

In late 2022, Tim Lenton, founding director of the Global Systems Institute, issued a grim report about impending climate tipping points including the collapse of ice sheets and the cataclysmic shift of North Atlantic ocean currents.

micha cárdenas, Associate Professor of Critical Race & Ethnic Studies and Performance, Play & Design at the University of California, Santa Cruz, called Lenton’s report “the scariest thing I have ever read. I just wanted to shout it from the rooftops. We are not just going to have warmer weather. We’re right on the edge of catastrophe. If we get to 1.5 degrees celsius (of global warming), we could trigger multiple tipping points.”

cárdenas noted that the Earth, in November of 2023, was already 1.44 degrees above global mean temperatures. She pointed to a September 2022 essay in Science, which went into detail about the various tipping points, each of which could lead to compounding global disaster, including the dieback of the Amazon Rainforest, and the melting of Boreal Permafrost.

Now, cárdenas, an interdisciplinary and multimedia artist, is sounding the warning about climate catastrophe tipping points in her new high-profile exhibition Probability Engine: Atlantic Overturning, which opened on October 5 at Nuit Blanche, Toronto’s all-night celebration of contemporary art. This exhibition has the potential to reach a vast audience. According to past crowd estimates, the event typically attracts more than 200,000 visitors every year. 

And cárdenas’s open-air exhibition is lingering well beyond the Nuit Blanche festivities. Curators have selected her work for the Nuit  Blanche’s Extended Program, running through October 13, offering visitors an immersive experience of climate collapse through interactive sculptures and virtual reality.

Four Sculptures Evoking Climate Crisis

“Probability Engine” uses imagery, lighting, sound, poetry, and augmented reality to create a visceral experience of climate justice, while helping visitors imagine a more just future, said exhibition curator Syrus Ware, a visual artist, educator, and activist.

Earlier this year, Ware assembled a group of artists to address climate change across various mediums. Though the subject matter is serious, the exhibition also reflects a spirit of “play, playfulness, and care practices,” Ware said. “This exhibition is an invitation to imagine what’s possible, together.”

The centerpiece of cárdenas’ exhibition is “Atlantic Overturning,” a 15-foot-long undulating sculpture. This sinuous form evokes the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a critical system of global ocean currents. In NASA’s animated illustrations of AMOC, global currents, made up of millions of eddies, look like a network of glow-worms.

A recent CNN report, citing multiple studies, warned that AMOC “is on course for collapse” due to rising ocean temperatures and altered salt levels caused by human-induced climate change. The collapse, which could happen as soon as next year, would have dire consequences for global ecosystems, according to the report.

To create “Atlantic Overturning,” cárdenas collaborated with Marcelo Díaz Viana Neto, a UC Santa Cruz graduate and multidisciplinary artist, and Star-Hagen Esquerra, a graduate of the Art and Design Games and Playable Media BA program, who is also an artist and Studio Manager at UC Santa Cruz’s Critical Realities Studio, to bring the project to life. 

Previous iterations of the project also featured three other powerful sculptures: The Probability Engine, a 3D-printed sculpture allowing viewers to witness the future of climate change while envisioning other outcomes; Permafrost, confronting visitors with the melting of Boreal Permafrost and the release of methane; and The Last Piece of Antarctic Ice, addressing rising sea levels. In addition, visitors can use an augmented reality app to explore virtual sculptures, including images of future sea walls proposed by many cities in response to rising sea levels and imaginary homes that walk on the land as it shifts from permafrost thaw. 

Art as a Catalyst for Change

cárdenas believes in the power of art to effect real-world change. Among her past projects is Unstoppable, a collaboration with Patrisse Cullors, Edxie Betts, and Chris Head, which created DIY bulletproof clothing to protect Black trans women. She also contributed to the Transborder Immigrant Tool, an app designed to increase the safety of people crossing deserts by providing survival information.

Now, cárdenas is using her artistic talents to raise awareness about the looming collapse of ocean currents. The Probability Engine app includes poems by cárdenas, urging readers to become “tipping points” for positive change.

“This could be an opportunity to change society,” cárdenas said. “One of the things that the Humanities can do is put things in context and make us think about the bigger picture. It’s the job of science to get into the smallest details, to prove something in ways that are replicable. I think my job is to take those very focused scientific studies and make broader connections.”

cárdenas also cites the climate impact of wars and the disproportionate suffering of indigenous groups and people of color due to climate change, adding, “I think about art in terms of making connections for people.” 

She cited studies showing that emissions from Israel’s war on Gaza are making an “immense” contribution to climate change, and the work of climate justice activists calling attention to indigenous groups and people of color who are suffering disproportionately from the effects of climate change including floods and devastating fires.

Her poems, tied to the various sculptures, bring home the emotional message of “The Probability Engine,” making climate change feel deeply personal to readers, while also calling attention to forms of collective resistance that she likens to an alternative and positive “tipping point.” 

“I think the power of art resides in reaching people on an emotional and affective level. Scientists try to reach people on a logical level,” she said. “I am trying to get people to think about the feeling of loss, of violence, of rebellion, of overturning. This exhibition is trying to say that we need to overturn the order that is creating this climate disaster.”

Probability Engine is supported by the Arts Division, the Center for Coastal Climate Resilience, Nuit Blanche, and the Anonymous Was a Woman award. For more information on The Probabilty Engine and to hear micha cárdenas’s poem, “We Will Be The Tipping Point,” visit the Critical Realities Studio website.