Our sky is constantly in flux: from dawn to dusk, ancient to future. Shaping Atmospheres traces the arc of humanity’s enduring relationship to the Sun and our planet’s nebulous environment.  

As our relationship to the Sun is physical and cyclical, so is the exhibition, revolving around an immersive looping film program. In medias res, the exhibition opens with the soundscape of a solar eclipse, enwrapping the listener in a moment of darkness before the first light of the Sun breaks the cosmic stillness. Harkening back to when these occurrences were powerful celestial events, the proceeding video returns to ancient Iranian Mithraic practices when sun worship was perhaps forged as a response to an ecological disaster over 4,000 years ago. 

Such history can be seen as the beginning of a long lineage of ideology that attempts to harness the productive powers of the Sun as well as mitigate its destructive potential: from the birth of monotheistic religions, through mystical teachings and socialist revolutions. Today, spiritual traditions are sublimated into technological forces driving a solar economy. Instead of evil spirits descending from the sky, we are now concerned with solar storms and heat waves. Our reality inverts: we fear the life-supporting sun, the Amazon emits more carbon than it stores. After millennia of terraforming across continents, the divide between natural and artificial evaporates. Terraforming shifts into aeroforming. The 20th century, shaped by total war (gas warfare) and system’s theory (weather modelling), has in turn propelled the 21st century’s drive towards geoengineering the atmosphere. What are the dangers and potentials of such extreme interventions? Have we faced such challenges before? The cycle closes with a meditative video of a volcano, the mythical Mount Ararat, shrouded in passing clouds. Fade to black. We enter the stillness once again of a solar eclipse. 

A series of objects frames the film cycle with a historical progression of empirical methods measuring the forces enacting upon our atmosphere: a hygrometer based on a human hair (1700s), a handblown glass pyranometer (c.1800), a high-altitude meteorological balloon (c.1900) and a live satellite feed of the burning star at the centre of our solar system (20th C.).

Artists:  

Saodat Ismailova 

Ursula Schulz-Dornburg 

Pallavi Paul 

Forensic Architecture 

Richard Mosse 

Noémie Goudal 

Bill Fontana 

Charles Stankievech  

Ala Roushan  

Jean-Pierre Aubé 

Priyageetha Dia 

Common Accounts 

E.A.T. Experiments in Art & Technology 

Haseeb Ahmed 

Ivy Lee 

The Shaping Atmospheres Exhibition is curated by Ala Roushan (OCAD University) and Charles Stankievech (Daniels Faculty, University of Toronto) with support from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

A parallel symposium (November 7-8) brings together technical, social-political, and philosophical perspectives to speculate on the future of our planetary environment, specifically addressing the implications of our solar economy and proposals for solar geoengineering. 

Image credits: 1) Saodat Ismailova, Melted into the Sun (2024); 2) Shaping Atmospheres, Installation View (with Ivy Lee). Slideshow: 3) Forensic Architecture, Cloud Studies (2020-2022); 4) Richard Mosse, Broken Spectre (2023); 5) Pallavi Paul, Garam Havaa (2024); 6) Jean-Pierre Aubé, 31 Suns (Dawn Chorus) (2010).