A new triennial titled "All That Sustains Us" has opened in Medina, a rural village in Western New York, focusing on art made in an era of economic and environmental decline. The exhibition, set in a former high school and other local venues like a church, train station, and YMCA, features works by artists including Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Victoria-Idongesit Udondian, Deirdre O’Mahony, Michael Wang, and Dionne Lee. These artists address themes of labor, supply chains, food systems, and ecological sustainability, often using locally sourced materials and community engagement.
This triennial matters because it offers a model for eco-conscious art surveys that move beyond doom-and-gloom narratives toward resourcefulness and practical action. By situating the show in a post-industrial town and emphasizing local systems—like maple syrup production or immigrant textile labor—the exhibition connects global issues of capitalism and environmental collapse to tangible, community-based responses. It challenges the art world to think critically about sustainability not just as a theme, but as a practice embedded in the very structure of the exhibition.