Artist Michael Najjar renders stock indices into mountaintops in the "high altitude" series

hangseng_80-09 from high altitude 2008-2010

Michael Najjar’s high altitude series represents a metaphor for corporate influence on the environment, suggesting that consumers through selective purchasing and corporations through responsible business practices can help steer the environmental movement. The good news is that financial markets are increasingly recognizing that long-term sustainability can influence corporate value. Initiatives such as the Dow Jones Sustainability Index and CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project) are helping to move this forward.

high altitude 2008-10 by Michael Najjar is a hybrid photography series of ten works. Najjar transformed data visualizations of leading stock market spanning 20-30 years into the mountain ranges he photographed during his trek to Mt. Aconcagua, the highest mountain after the Himalayas. The indices include Bovespa, DAX, Dow Jones, Hang Seng, Lehman, MSCI, Nasdaq, Nikkei, RTS, and Sensex.  

Najjar’s art has been exhibited internationally in Streaming Museum’s A View From The Cloud programs.

high altitude (2008-2010)

nasdaq_80-09

rts_95-09

bovespa_93-09

Technique: hybrid photography, archival pigment print, aludibond, matte plexi (diasec), custom made aluminium frame.  Large format: 202 x 132 cm | 79.5 in x 52 in. Small format: 102 x 67 cm | 40.2 in x 26.4 in.

Museo El Laboral, Gijon, Spain, 2014 .

A portfolio of the complete set of ten works is available through Streaming Museum. For information – contact@streamingmuseum.org.

DRIVING CORPORATE CHANGE

Consumers through selective purchasing, and corporations through responsible business practices, can steer the environmental movement.

Dow Jones Sustainability World Indices (renamed Dow Jones Best-in-Class Indices) link corporate investment value to long term sustainability commitment according to economic, environmental, and social criteria. CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project), a non-profit organization that motivates companies and cities to disclose their environmental impacts, gives decision makers the data they need to change market behavior.

Christiana Figueres, former Executive Secretary, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) says that courage, hope and solidarity is needed in facing solutions for climate change and that “we must inject relentless optimism into the system.”

MICHAEL NAJJAR

Technological progress has accelerated to the point that the future is happening to us far faster than we could ever have anticipated. Michael Najjar belongs to the contemporary artistic vanguard taking a critical look at the technological forces shaping the 21st century. In his photo and video works Najjar approaches art with an interdisciplinary mindset, transmuting the fields of science, art, and technology into visions and utopias of future social structures emerging under the impact of cutting-edge technologies.

Najjar’s work has been included in many international museum exhibitions and biennials, including the Joan Miró Foundation in Barcelona, the 2006 Venice Biennale’s 10th International Architecture Exhibition, the 9th Havana Biennale 2006, Convergence Biennale Beijing 2007. In 2008, Najjar had his first mid-career retrospective at the Museum for Photography and the Museum for Contemporary Art GEM in The Hague. In 2015 he was selected to exhibit at the ZKM I Globale’s “Exo-Evolution” curated by Peter Weibel. His work is represented in numerous public collections including ZKM Museum for Contemporary Art, Karlsruhe; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Museum Deichtorhallen Hamburg; Gemeente Museum, The Hague; CAC Museum Málaga and in many leading corporate and private collections.

michaelnajjar.com