WE EXIST emerges from a fundamental question: what would it mean to truly listen to nature, not as a symbol or a resource, but as a subject with its own voice and rights? Presented during the 6th EnJust Conference 2025 at the German Institute for Development and Sustainability (IDOS) in Bonn, this solo exhibition by María Elena Vargas Magaña brings art into conversation with environmental justice and legal thought.
The exhibition is inspired by the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Sierra Club v. Morton (1972), particularly the dissenting opinion of Justice William O. Douglas. In his vision, rivers, trees, and landscapes should be recognized as legal subjects. Vargas Magaña revisits this idea through painting, turning legal debate into a visual and emotional experience.
The exhibition features fourteen abstract and figurative works in which nature is not a backdrop, but an active presence. Through bold color, layered textures, and expressive forms, the paintings suggest resistance, memory, and agency. Working within an expressionist style, the artist brings emotion and intuition into dialogue with law and science, showing them as meaningful ways of engaging with environmental questions.
Vargas Magaña’s interdisciplinary practice, combining doctoral research in Environmental Science and Engineering with sixteen years of artistic work, gives the exhibition both depth and urgency. Rather than illustrating scientific data, her art transforms knowledge into feeling, offering a space for reflection, empathy, and peaceful dissent.
Curated and museographed by Atziri Pérez Galindo, with curatorial text and design by Esmeralda Ramos, WE EXIST resonates with the EnJust 2025 commitment to conservation, justice, and inclusive futures. The exhibition insists that coexistence requires more than recognition, it requires listening. It also reminds us that the right to exist, and to be heard, is not exclusively human.
a few impressions of the artwork:
The full exhibition and artworks can be explored online at:
https://artfactorybook.my.canva.site/weexist
