The Artist as Ecologist — Contemporary Art and the Environment

Filipa Ramos’s latest book, The Artist as Ecologist (London: Lund Humphries, October 2025), proposes that contemporary art is at the forefront of environmental awareness. In it, the Lisbon-born writer and curator highlights the ethical approach taken by artists towards the environment over the past decade and discusses their role in raising environmental consciousness. In this talk, Ramos will analyse the characteristics that define the artist as ecologist in the 21st century and suggest the manners in which environmental values and artistic expression may complement one another. 

Filipa Ramos, PhD, is a writer and curator. Her practice-led research focuses on how contemporary art engages with nature and ecology. She is Lecturer at the Institute Art Gender Nature at the Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW and Artistic Director of Loop Festival, Barcelona, dedicated to fostering artists’ cinema. Ramos was curator of the Art Basel Film sector and a founding curator of the online artists’ cinema Vdrome. With Lucia Pietroiusti, she curates the arts, humanities and science festival The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish (2018–ongoing). Her recent projects include BESTIARI, the Catalan representation at the 60th Venice Biennale (2024), and, with Lucia Pietroiusti both Songs for the Changing Seasons, 1st Klima Biennale Wien (2024), and Persons Personen, the 8th Biennale Gherdëina (2022). In 2021, she co-curated Bodies of Water, the 13th Shanghai Biennale.