On a grey morning outside Tate Modern in 2023, protest banners rose against Olafur Eliasson’s luminous installations. The confrontation between activists outside and curators inside revealed a tension that could no longer be ignored. Art was not only representing the climate crisis, but it was also being asked to respond structurally to it. The spectacle of melting ice blocks gave way to demands for divestment, carbon audits, and transparency. The protest itself became part of the exhibition, collapsing the distance between culture and politics.
For years, climate art was dominated by spectacle: dramatic photographs of vanishing glaciers, immersive installations of catastrophe, or monumental performances of fragility. These works carried emotional force but rarely translated into political action. They raised awareness but left structures intact, reinforcing the gap between cultural symbolism and systemic accountability. That gap is now closing. Audiences and activists alike demand more than awareness; they demand reform.
As greenwashing collides with policy fatigue, the credibility of art now hinges on its ability to transition from spectacle to systemic reform. Rock & Art insists that this is the critical frontier where creativity becomes a form of political infrastructure. Murals are demands for water rights, not decorative gestures. Performances that challenge oil sponsorships force cultural institutions into ethical decisions. Biennales embedding carbon audits signal that culture is entering governance, not only commentary.
The urgency is heightened by the collapse of trust in political promises. Governments convene summits and publish commitments that often remain unfulfilled. Corporations advertise sustainability while funding extraction. In this void of credibility, art has become a site of accountability. It is being asked to provide what politics evades: transparency, justice, and tangible transformation.
Historical precedents remind us that this shift is part of a longer trajectory. Feminist artists of the 1970s forced museums to address gendered exclusion. Anti-apartheid boycotts in the 1980s compelled cultural institutions to confront complicity with systemic racism. Today, climate art carries this tradition forward, targeting extractive sponsorships and unsustainable operations. The demand is not just visibility but structural change. Art becomes a lever of reform when it challenges institutions to embody the futures they exhibit.
The global nature of the climate emergency intensifies these demands. A performance in Lagos, a mural in Bogotá, and an installation in London now speak to a single planetary crisis. These interventions connect across borders through networks of solidarity, exposing the uneven responsibilities of the Global North. The universality of climate breakdown ensures that art cannot remain localised in impact. It is compelled into transnational conversations about justice. Culture becomes the connective tissue of global accountability.
This is why spectacle is no longer enough. The public, especially younger generations, recognises when climate aesthetics mask complicity. They demand not images of collapse but infrastructures of survival. This shift redefines what counts as credible cultural production. Neutrality is untenable, and awareness without reform is empty. The stakes are ethical, political, and existential.
The thesis of this essay is clear. Confronted with the climate emergency, art must transform from representation to reform. Protest and performance have the potential to reshape contracts, budgets, and policies. Cultural institutions cannot claim relevance while avoiding accountability. The transition from spectacle to structure is underway, and its pace will define the legitimacy of culture in the twenty-first century. Art, in this context, is no longer a luxury but a necessity.
From Protest to Policy
For decades, climate art was synonymous with spectacle. From ice blocks installed in city squares to immersive exhibitions simulating rising seas, artists relied on shock to communicate urgency. These gestures were powerful but limited, often stopping at emotional impact without demanding institutional reform. Awareness campaigns generated headlines but left extractive sponsorships and unsustainable practices intact. The result was a cultural sector that dramatised the crisis while remaining complicit in its causes.
The last decade has altered this dynamic. Activists have pushed institutions to move beyond symbolic alignment, insisting on measurable accountability. When Tate Modern ended its BP sponsorship in 2016, it was not simply a cultural decision but a political rupture. The Royal Shakespeare Company followed in 2019, cutting ties with Shell after a youth-led campaign. These moments signalled a break: ethics had entered the heart of cultural legitimacy.
The Gallery Climate Coalition has crystallised this shift. Established as a collective of galleries, museums, and arts organisations, it set a target of reducing emissions by 50% by 2030. Unlike traditional cultural initiatives, the coalition focuses on data, requiring members to track freight, travel, and energy use. This moves climate art beyond the gallery wall into the mechanics of cultural production. The symbolic is replaced with structural targets, redefining what counts as credible action.
Artists themselves have catalysed this transition. Cape Farewell, a UK initiative founded in 2001, brought artists and scientists together on Arctic expeditions to translate data into cultural imagination. These collaborations blurred disciplinary boundaries, transforming scientific evidence into artworks that travelled across museums and classrooms. Such projects did more than visualise climate change; they demanded that institutions take responsibility for how knowledge circulates. Art became a mediator between research and policy.
In local contexts, art has embedded climate politics directly into communities. London neighbourhood projects, for example, turned derelict walls into climate murals and vacant plots into shared gardens. These interventions did not end with aesthetic transformation; they sparked conversations between residents, councils, and policy-makers. Art in this form acted as a social practice, mobilising accountability at the grassroots. The cultural became inseparable from the political, and reform began at the street level.
Across Latin America, similar dynamics emerge with greater intensity. In Colombia, communities living along polluted rivers work with artists to demand environmental protection. Murals double as public petitions, performances as civic testimonies, installations as collective demands. In Brazil, Indigenous collectives stage performances that combine ritual with resistance to deforestation. These practices extend art’s influence from symbolic resistance into the terrain of public policy.
But scepticism remains, especially when institutions adopt climate art as branding. Biennales celebrating eco-aesthetics still rely on unsustainable supply chains, air travel, and extractive sponsors. Critics argue this turns art into a form of greenwashing, masking complicity beneath images of melting glaciers and forest fires. Younger audiences are quick to identify these contradictions, exposing hypocrisy on social media. For them, credibility rests not in spectacle but in alignment between rhetoric and institutional practice.
The trajectory from protest to policy is not linear but contested. Every new exhibition, partnership, or funding contract tests whether institutions are serious about reform. Protests outside museums remain essential, creating pressure that exhibitions alone cannot sustain. When activists stage die-ins or banner drops, they remind institutions that audiences are political actors, not passive consumers. It is within this dialectic of protest and policy that cultural transformation begins.
Accountability Beyond Aesthetics
Accountability has become the decisive measure of credibility in the cultural sector. Spectacle, however captivating, no longer suffices in an age where audiences demand verifiable change. Exhibitions alone cannot cover for the contradictions of sponsorships, procurement, and operations tied to extractive industries. The demand is clear: transparency must accompany creativity. To speak of sustainability without evidence is to risk irrelevance.
The non-profit Julie’s Bicycle pioneered the integration of environmental reporting into the cultural fabric of the United Kingdom. Working with Arts Council England requires organisations to submit annual environmental data alongside their artistic reports. This framework shifts sustainability from a side project to a structural obligation. Carbon footprints become as significant as audience numbers, and procurement policies are judged alongside curatorial choices. Accountability here is not symbolic—it is administrative, procedural, and binding.
Institutions that take these demands seriously show what cultural reform can look like. In 2022, the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art announced targets aligned with the Paris Agreement, embedding climate goals across departments. The policy addressed building energy use, travel, and supply chains, creating a model of holistic accountability. Visitors could trace the institution’s commitments, making transparency visible to the public. In doing so, the Baltic redefined legitimacy as measurable reform rather than rhetorical alignment.
But unevenness defines the field. While some institutions embrace climate accountability, others adopt sustainability as branding. Biennales commission eco-themed pavilions while importing unsustainable materials. International exhibitions celebrate environmental consciousness while generating emissions through long-haul flights for artists and curators. These contradictions weaken public trust. Greenwashing threatens to erode credibility at the very moment when cultural institutions are most needed.
Artists have not hesitated to highlight these hypocrisies. At the 2023 Venice Biennale, collectives from the Global South staged interventions exposing northern institutions’ reliance on extractive sponsorships. Their works forced uncomfortable conversations about the inequities that structure global cultural production. Media coverage amplified the critique, placing accountability at the centre of debates on art and climate. In this way, artists turned spectacle into a weapon against complicity.
Funding sources remain the sharpest test of integrity. Oil sponsorships, once taken for granted, have become radioactive. Tate’s decision to end its partnership with BP in 2016 and the Royal Shakespeare Company’s break with Shell in 2019 proved that sustained activism can shift institutional policy. These precedents ripple across the sector, raising the stakes for other organisations. Financial ethics are now as central to legitimacy as curatorial innovation.
Audiences, especially Millennials and Gen Z, sharpen these pressures. They scrutinise institutions not only for exhibitions but for governance. Their trust depends on alignment between rhetoric and practice. Boycotts, petitions, and social media campaigns expose contradictions swiftly. For these generations, accountability is cultural currency, and transparency determines participation.
Accountability also reshapes education and the future of art. Universities and academies now integrate climate literacy into their curricula, embedding sustainability into training for young artists. Students demand to learn how to link creative practice to ecological responsibility. This prepares the next generation to see accountability not as an afterthought but as an artistic tool. The archive of art history is being rewritten to include data, justice, and reform. Culture’s credibility will be judged by its structures as much as by its symbols.
Shifting Voices: Global South and Decolonial Approaches
Mainstream coverage of climate emergency art frequently privileges voices from the Global North. Exhibitions in London, New York, or Berlin dominate the conversation, while practices in Lagos, Bogotá, or Manila remain underrepresented. Yet some of the most transformative work is emerging from the Global South, where climate change is experienced not as an abstraction but as a lived catastrophe. Here, art does not merely represent collapse—it documents survival. To ignore these perspectives is to misunderstand the full scope of climate accountability.
In Colombia, artists collaborate with riverine communities whose survival is threatened by mining and pollution. Murals appear along polluted rivers as public petitions, transforming walls into political texts. Performances and storytelling workshops connect intergenerational memories of resistance with contemporary activism. These projects bypass museum walls and intervene directly in civic debates. They prove that cultural practice can double as environmental defence.
Brazil offers further examples of this integration between art and survival. Indigenous collectives stage performances that merge ritual with climate protest, asserting sovereignty while resisting deforestation. These performances are not symbolic gestures but declarations of political and territorial rights. They connect ecological protection with cultural continuity, dismantling the false divide between nature and culture. In doing so, they force institutions to recognise sustainability as justice.
Nigeria’s artistic landscape has also contributed powerful interventions. Exhibitions at Lagos’s Centre for Contemporary Art have centred on the oil exploitation of the Niger Delta. Artists draw on oral histories, photographs, and performance to document displacement and environmental degradation. The emphasis is not on spectacle for distant audiences but on testimony for communities whose lives have been uprooted. Art in this context functions as both an archive and a demand for justice.
In the Philippines, climate art intersects with disaster preparedness in typhoon-prone regions. Artists collaborate with NGOs and local councils to stage participatory theatre, blending scientific data with indigenous knowledge. These performances double as rehearsal for real emergencies, integrating resilience into cultural practice. Communities gain tools for survival while policy-makers are compelled to listen. Art here collapses the boundaries between education, activism, and infrastructure.
These practices reveal the limits of Western-centred approaches. Sustainability cannot be divorced from histories of extraction and colonialism. As UNESCO’s Culture|2030 Indicators highlight, culture must be recognised as both a driver and a measure of sustainable development. Decolonial approaches challenge institutions in the Global North to confront the unequal responsibilities for climate breakdown. Without this confrontation, climate art risks reproducing hierarchies under the guise of ecological concern.
Digital networks have amplified the reach of Global South voices. Videos of performances in rural Colombia or murals in Nigeria circulate on social media within hours, bypassing traditional gatekeepers. Online solidarity builds connections between communities experiencing similar crises in different geographies. Activist networks from Manila to Bogotá exchange strategies, ensuring that art travels faster than policy. This transnational circulation strengthens the cultural archive of climate resistance.
The lesson is clear: justice must anchor sustainability. Global South artists insist that accountability is not only technical but cultural, historical, and political. Their interventions remind us that climate change is inseparable from colonial legacies and economic inequality. By centring marginalised voices, art reshapes international debates and disrupts tokenistic inclusion. The archive of climate emergency art is richer, more complex, and more radical when Global South practices lead the conversation.
Cultural Institutions at the Crossroads
Cultural institutions now face a decisive choice. They can continue treating climate-themed art as spectacle, an opportunity to brand themselves as progressive without changing underlying structures. Or they can reimagine themselves as laboratories of accountability, embedding sustainability into governance and operations. This crossroads is existential: the legitimacy of museums, galleries, and biennales depends on it. Neutrality is no longer a viable position in the climate emergency.
The Gallery Climate Coalition exemplifies this tension. By setting targets to halve emissions across the art world by 2030, it offers a framework for collective responsibility. Institutions that sign up commit to monitoring freight, travel, and energy use, shifting focus from rhetoric to measurement. Yet critics ask whether voluntary commitments are enough to disrupt entrenched systems of sponsorship and dependence. The coalition’s influence demonstrates both the possibilities and fragilities of cultural reform.
Museums across Europe are experimenting with new approaches. Some now integrate carbon tracking directly into exhibition design, calculating the environmental impact of installations before they are staged. Others prioritise local artists to reduce air travel and freight emissions. A few have begun redesigning procurement policies to exclude unsustainable materials, embedding accountability into the supply chain. These incremental changes accumulate into a new infrastructure of culture.
Governments are also starting to take culture seriously as a climate actor. UNESCO’s Culture|2030 Indicators link cultural policy with sustainability goals, embedding art into frameworks of governance. The UNFCCC’s Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE) initiative calls on cultural sectors to educate and mobilise citizens. In the UK, Arts Council England now requires environmental reporting as part of its funding structures. These developments elevate art from commentary to a policy instrument. Culture is no longer peripheral to climate governance; it is part of the machinery.
Yet contradictions persist. Financial precarity forces institutions into compromises with sponsors tied to extractive industries. Public funding, already limited, rarely covers the costs of transformation. Cultural leaders face a double bind: to survive economically while pursuing ethical legitimacy. These structural tensions reveal the fragility of reform. Progress, while real, is uneven and vulnerable to political retreat.
Audiences continue to exert pressure. Student campaigns demand divestment from fossil fuel sponsorships, while petitions and boycotts target institutions that appear hypocritical. Artists withdraw from exhibitions in protest when funding sources conflict with ecological values. Social media amplifies these acts of resistance, forcing accountability into the public eye. Institutions are being reshaped not only by policy but by protest.
International collaboration offers both inspiration and critique. Projects like Project Pressure bring artists together across continents to document glacial retreat, while biennales exchange sustainable curation practices. Digital archives preserve climate art interventions that might otherwise disappear, giving them permanence and visibility. These collaborations enhance legitimacy while amplifying voices from underrepresented regions. Solidarity becomes a method of cultural transformation.
At this crossroads, the question is no longer whether art should engage with climate politics but how deeply. Institutions that continue to treat climate art as spectacle risk irrelevance, while those embedding accountability demonstrate leadership. The stakes go beyond exhibitions and collections; they involve governance, budgets, and survival. Culture can either perpetuate greenwashing or model reform. The path chosen will define the future of cultural credibility.
Eco-Activist Artists and Creative Resistance
Artists remain at the centre of cultural transformation in the climate emergency. They are no longer satisfied with symbolism or awareness campaigns that generate headlines but little change. Eco-activist artists demand accountability and often propose structural alternatives. Their practices blur the lines between art, science, activism, and governance. Creativity becomes a form of resistance that insists on systemic reform.
Olafur Eliasson illustrates this duality of spectacle and structure. His 2018 installation Ice Watch at Tate Modern placed Arctic ice blocks in London, symbolising fragility in real time. While critics called it a dramatic gesture, Eliasson’s broader commitment to solar energy projects through Little Sun extended his activism into infrastructure. This combination of aesthetic impact and structural intervention demonstrates what climate art can achieve. Art becomes not only a representation but an infrastructure for survival.
Brazilian Indigenous collectives exemplify eco-activist resistance from the Global South. Their performances merge ritual with protest, challenging both deforestation and cultural erasure. These interventions are not symbolic gestures for outside audiences but assertions of sovereignty and justice. By bringing ritual into protest, they reframe climate action as inseparable from Indigenous rights. Their art demands accountability from governments, corporations, and cultural institutions alike.
Younger generations of artists are reimagining tactics through digital activism. Online exhibitions now use immersive media to document rising sea levels, creating accessible experiences without the carbon cost of travel. Social platforms allow artists to reach global audiences and mobilise support in real time. This shift democratises climate art, making it less dependent on elite institutions. Creative resistance adapts to technological constraints while maintaining political urgency.
Performance remains one of the most disruptive forms of eco-activism. Protest interventions staged inside galleries force institutions to confront the gap between their rhetoric and funding. These actions often involve arrests or public controversy, but they provoke debate where silence previously reigned. Performance art in this sense becomes a tool of accountability. It collapses the boundary between audience and protest, turning spectators into witnesses.
Community-based projects further illustrate art’s ability to merge aesthetics with infrastructure. In the UK, artists collaborate with local councils to transform derelict plots into gardens and climate murals. These spaces serve as both cultural interventions and environmental infrastructure. The projects spark policy conversations while fostering civic pride. Resistance here is expressed through tangible transformation, not only imagery.
Satire has also emerged as a critical strategy. Eco-activist artists produce works that parody institutional greenwashing, exposing the contradictions of museums that accept fossil fuel money while staging eco-exhibitions. These interventions protect art from co-optation, ensuring its critical edge remains sharp. By mocking sustainability slogans, artists prevent culture from being absorbed into the very systems it critiques. Satirical resistance keeps accountability visible.
Eco-activist artists are rewriting the narrative of climate emergency art. They refuse to separate beauty from justice, or performance from policy. Their works inspire audiences while demanding systemic change from institutions. By fusing critique with construction, they create cultural blueprints for reform. The climate crisis demands nothing less than this fusion of imagination and accountability.
From Slogans to Structures
The climate emergency demands more than aesthetic gestures. Slogans and symbolic exhibitions may generate visibility, but they cannot replace systemic accountability. Cultural institutions are now judged not only by their collections but by the integrity of their operations. This shift redefines legitimacy across the sector. Art is no longer credible when confined to awareness; it must function as infrastructure for reform.
Examples of reform already exist. The Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art embedded climate targets into operations aligned with the Paris Agreement, addressing energy use and procurement. Julie’s Bicycle provides frameworks for mandatory environmental reporting in partnership with Arts Council England. The Gallery Climate Coalition sets measurable emissions reduction goals that members must pursue. Together, these initiatives illustrate a new cultural landscape where accountability defines relevance.
Audiences amplify these shifts through direct pressure. Millennials and Gen Z scrutinise institutions more closely than any previous generation, linking their trust to ethical alignment. Boycotts, petitions, and social media campaigns expose contradictions with immediacy. Institutions that fail to align with justice lose credibility and participation. Audience pressure has become as central to reform as internal policy.
Artists themselves sustain momentum by demanding more than rhetoric. Performances and installations that critique greenwashing remind institutions that aesthetics cannot mask complicity. Community projects that merge creativity with environmental infrastructure model reform at the grassroots level. Digital activism broadens access, decentralising climate art and resisting elite control. These strategies fuse imagination with accountability, ensuring culture cannot retreat into spectacle.
The implications extend beyond galleries and biennales. UNESCO and the UNFCCC have incorporated cultural actors into frameworks of climate governance. COP summits now host cultural forums where artists and institutions present sustainability commitments. Policy-makers increasingly recognise that culture shapes public consciousness in ways science and politics alone cannot. This integration signals the arrival of culture as a stakeholder in climate policy.
Yet vigilance remains essential. Financial pressures continue to push institutions towards extractive sponsors, threatening the integrity of reforms. Political will fluctuates, and cultural budgets remain precarious. Without sustained pressure from artists and audiences, reforms risk becoming episodic rather than structural. Neutrality is no longer possible; accountability must be continuous.
The danger of co-optation is ever-present. Institutions may adopt the language of sustainability while leaving exploitative practices untouched. Such greenwashing undermines the credibility of climate art and corrodes public trust. Only transparency and systemic reform can protect against this collapse. Structural accountability must resist being diluted into symbolic branding.
From slogans to structures: this is the decisive trajectory of climate emergency art. Cultural institutions are being remade by the demands of justice, data, and accountability. The pace of this transformation will define whether culture serves as a tool for systemic reform or as a distraction from inaction. Rock & Art asserts that art must embed itself in governance, budgets, and contracts to remain legitimate. Protest must become policy, and creativity must reform the very systems it critiques.
Futures of Art and Climate Policy
The future of art and climate policy remains contested. Optimists argue that institutions will embed accountability fully, transforming culture into a driver of reform. Sceptics see the danger of greenwashing disguised as progress, with museums adopting the language of sustainability while clinging to extractive funding. The outcome will be shaped by choices made within this decade. The crossroads is not abstract but immediate.
COP30 will be a critical moment for this transformation. Cultural forums are expected to feature prominently, with artists presenting visions that challenge traditional politics. Institutions will showcase commitments to carbon neutrality, and audiences will scrutinise whether these promises are credible. The summit will test the sincerity of cultural actors. Success or failure will resonate far beyond the walls of exhibition halls.
Technological innovation offers both opportunities and risks. Digital exhibitions and virtual residencies reduce carbon costs while expanding global reach. Immersive technologies allow audiences to experience rising sea levels or deforestation without physical travel. Yet technology cannot resolve structural contradictions alone. Accountability still requires governance, funding reform, and justice at the centre of decision-making.
Global collaboration will remain essential. Projects like Project Pressure or transnational biennales provide platforms for solidarity across borders. Digital archives preserve activist interventions that might otherwise vanish from public memory. Shared strategies allow communities from Lagos to Bogotá to Manila to learn from one another. These practices reveal that culture is strongest when collective rather than isolated.
Risks, however, are real and persistent. Financial dependency on sponsors tied to extraction threatens to undermine reform. Governments under economic strain may retreat from climate commitments, reducing cultural funding. Institutions under pressure may choose survival over accountability. Without vigilance, progress can quickly reverse into tokenism. Transformation is fragile and must be defended.
Future generations will intensify these demands. Millennials and Gen Z, already dominant in cultural consumption, bring sharper scrutiny than any previous cohort. They measure institutions not only by collections or programmes but by governance and ethics. Their petitions, boycotts, and digital campaigns force accountability into public debates. Cultural futures will be shaped by their insistence on justice.
Artists will remain catalysts for this transformation. They will expose contradictions, propose alternatives, and inspire solidarity. Their interventions will not only visualise the crisis but reshape institutions from within. By blurring the lines between art and governance, they expand what cultural legitimacy can mean. Futures are being rehearsed in exhibitions and performances that double as political laboratories.
The climate crisis is ongoing and irreversible in its urgency. Art cannot solve it alone, but it can change how societies imagine responsibility. By making accountability visible, tangible, and urgent, art pressures institutions to move from representation to reform. From protest to policy, culture is being reshaped in real time. The future will depend on whether institutions dare to follow through.
From Representation to Reform
Art has never been only about reflection. It has always been about possibility. In the climate emergency, that possibility must translate into accountability. At Rock & Art, we believe that creativity is not a luxury but a responsibility. It can confront greenwashing, dismantle complicity, and inspire structural change. The future will be shaped not by slogans but by the courage of those who transform protest into policy. Let us listen to artists, amplify their demands, and insist that culture does more than represent. It must reform.
