Material Resistance

Redefining the Human-Nature Relationship

The Whitefield Center, Savannah, Georgia, May 19 - 25, 2023

Amanda Bennett’s solo exhibition titled Material Resistance: Redefining the Human-Nature Relationship was held at The Whitefield Center, a historic house built in the late 19th century, in Savannah, Georgia in May 2023.

This exhibition offers an engaging site for reimagining our relationships with the natural and material worlds through the merging of art and science.  By using art as a form of resistance to provoke attention, create an emotional connection and build empathy for nature, this body of work offers a thoughtful and responsible approach to a new form of material-making.  Reflecting the themes of material reimagination, nature as storyteller, ephemerality and collaboration, the work crosses scales from the intimate (The Bio-Vessel Collection) to the grand (Florescence) and explores planar, sculptural and accumulated form-making.  These works, exhibited together, are organized as two interconnected stories framed around the relationship of our global ecosystem to our local ecosystem of coastal Georgia.

Each project within the exhibition acts as an environmental storyteller, providing a new way of seeing and considering our relationship with nature.  Combining materials from nature – natural biopolymers, dyes and plant matter – with sculpture, weaving, and embroidery techniques, the exhibition shows that we can develop compelling solutions that offer an alternative approach to synthetic materials. Through visual and tactile investigations of form, color, and texture, each piece offers a way to intellectually, emotionally and physically reconnect with nature; it allows us to see ourselves as part of, rather than separate from, the intricate network of our shared ecosystem.  The exhibition offers a unique platform for understanding, challenging and re-envisioning how we define the human-nature relationship.