ICA’s Mark Dion exhibit features live birds, natural specimens

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Art and science are often considered as separate entities — the former focuses on abstract ideas and concepts while the latter concentrates on data and observation. Mark Dion’s exhibition “Misadventures of a 21st-Century Naturalist” at the Institute of Contemporary Art brings the two together.

Dion’s exhibition questions humankind’s relationship with nature in modern times. His exhibits include everything from soil collected from Venezuela to live birds in a library of his creation. Most of his art is collected and excavated from places across the globe as a means of connecting people with nature. The show opened Wednesday and will run through Dec. 31.

Ruth Erickson, Mannion Family Curator at the ICA, discussed the uniqueness of Dion’s art form.

“The show is organized around these methods that he’s returned to, which are methods that he draws from the fields of the sciences,” Erickson said. “He shadows and uses those methods as an art form. The focus of Mark’s work has always been about how we as a human culture create our ideas about nature.”

The first exhibit in Dion’s show is based on the theme of dinosaurs in childhood.

Erickson said, “Childhood is this really formative moment in which we as humans begin to articulate and develop relationships with the animal world and the living world.”

Much of Dion’s art involves fieldwork and collecting specimens, such as soil, fish and insects.

“He collects his materials from tag sales, from taxidermy, from scientific distributors,” Erickson said. “He’s a really committed environmentalist and he’s really cautious about participating in the commerce of any kind of threatened species.”

One of Dion’s pieces is a staircase containing specimens of all kind, from butterflies to crystal geodes.

“This is representing the schema called the scala naturae, which was a schema that was developed by the Greek philosopher Aristotle,” said Erickson.

“Mark is really drawing attention here to how hierarchy has set up these ideas,” she added. “Mark is committed to examining the ramifications of these kind of ideas about hierarchy.”

Another work, called “The Cabinet of Marine Debris,” contains pieces of trash that Dion found on a beach in northern Alaska. Dion uses plastic trash as his material to raise awareness for the effect humans have on nature.

The beach in Alaska is in a remote area without people, but trash still covers it due to the ocean’s currents. Through the piece, Dion attempts to show his audience their impact on ecosystems that they do not even come in contact with.

A number of Dion’s exhibits contain artifacts that he has found while on archeological digs. But, Erickson said, Dion’s digs are unique in that they “are under only a few feet.”

“Unlike an archaeologist who might look for the oldest, or the most rare things, Mark’s really interested in the things we throw away and the way they connect with our own kind of ordinary life as well as our own contemporary times,” she said.

The exhibit contains a cage full of several live birds who are native to Massachusetts.

“It has 22 birds in it — zebra finches and yellow canaries,” Erickson said.

This is a sculpture that Dion made for them that is a library full of the kinds of books that birds might want to read if they are thinking about their own well-being,” she added. Visitors are able to enter into the cage to see the birds up close.

Dion confessed that his work stems from a love for biology and art.

“It isn’t always obvious that you should make your work about what you care most about, but for me it wasn’t so hard to figure that out,” Dion said.

When starting a new project, he said that he starts with the site.

“The site is the most important thing,” Dion said. “Where is this and how does this address the conditions that it is produced in? The site always initiates the discourse.”

Gabrielle Sherman, 20, of Needham Heights, was an attendee of the exhibitions opening day.

“It’s really interesting the way that science is combined with art because we usually think that the two can’t be related to each other at all,” Sherman said. “Using art to promote a message of environmentalism and consciousness about nature is really smart and really impactful.”