Cobalt is in our phones, 50% of packaged goods contain palm oil and microplastics have been detected in human placentas. Globally traded materials are, for better or for worse, the everyday bedrock of our society. Artist Linda Lamignan explores their dual heritage from two oil economies, Norway and Nigeria, and explains how animism can inform a different understanding of natural resources. Artist Odur Ronald makes use of aluminium in his sculptures, highlighting parallel routes of global migration and extraction of resources from Africa today. Art historian Stephanie O’Rourke explains the complex relationship artists have always had to the materials traded through global networks since the age of industrialization.

Presented by Vid Simoniti with contributions from Liverpool Biennial 2025 curator Marie-Anne McQuay.

The second series of Art Against the World is part of the Liverpool Biennial 2025 public programme and is co-produced with the University of Liverpool.