THE HUMAN LEGACY
Curated by Ember Reese
One thing that sets humans apart from the rest of the animal kingdom is our ability to use tools to shape the environment around us. But what happens when we push too far? Our fast-paced world of convenience is giving rise to pollution, deforestation, and even climate change. In building up our environment we’re running through precious resources, demolishing animals and ecosystems, and inevitably destroying our planet.
Through these works we can see from the perspective of multiple artists what harm is being done and what the future may hold if we don’t find a way to live in harmony with Mother Earth.
Thank you to everyone who participated and supported me in putting this exhibit together. I am so grateful to have such wonderful people in my life.
The aim of this piece was to capture a memory of flying into Boston Massachusetts at night. The moon was being reflected on Buzzard's Bay, and the shape of the land was visible due to orange and fluorescent lights, tightly clustered together. In this moment, I was struck by how light created by people has taken over the landscape, especially on the east coast.
It is terrible, how the Bay Area has changed in terms of littering over the last decades. Who is responsible? Who cares?
I tried to illustrate the struggle against what plagues human existence and used the example of the pandemic.
After the recent events I wonder what else is needed to fight the old evils like prejudice, racism, and ignorance.
A surrealist painting depicting a personified depiction of Mother Earth in an apocalyptic landscape.
Once beautiful scenery was the backdrop to social media photos, but if pollution and littering doesn’t get under control, our garden landscapes will look very different.
“If the bee disappears from the surface of the Earth, man would have no more than four years left to live.” Albert Einstein
This sketch was done during the lockdown and is to show my gratitude towards our frontline medical workers and scientists. The shelter in place gave us all a chance to reflect upon things from different perspectives. For the majority of us, life had come to a standstill, as if the clock was broken and time had stopped. On the other side of the clock were our health workers, our scientists and researchers, fighting relentlessly to win this race against time.
The self-portrait is a representation of the common man who feels helpless yet hopeful that their miracle workers will fix the clock soon. The broken pieces in the clock represent the stillness of our daily lives at present and the running figure represents the race against time that our doctors and scientists are up against.
This photo was taken on Valentine’s Day, 2022. On that special day I noticed the trend in number of COVID cases in the US (published by the CDC) was descending precipitously from its peak on January 10, 2022. For the first time I felt that the Pandemic was manageably contained, or mostly under control. This photo captured my state of mind. We have defeated different COVID variants the past two years. The green covid cell is representative of the Omicron variant because it’s the least lethal.
The Mount Ijen is an active volcano above 2,799m sea level in Indonesia’s eastern Java. When it gets dark, you can see the glowing blue liquid fire pouring down the mountainside from the crater. It's not lava, but the sulfur that Ijen is known for. Not only tourists make the arduous way up the mountain to then descend into the crater, but countless miners also descend through the thick sulfur smoke to mine the sulfur, the gold of the devil, as they call it, and carry it into the valley. What they do is costing them their health and their lives. The miners rarely get older than 50 years. They do it for their families, hoping that their children do not have to follow in their footsteps.
Tony Sánchez-Ariño is known for being one of the biggest trophy hunters alive, posing with his kills. This piece turns the tables to show how disturbing killing for sport truly is.
The Painting emphasizes how our beautiful Earth is on the verge of a meltdown due to the rapidly changing climate.
The child’s curious eyes are filled with disappointment overlooking the meltdown of the symbolic glove. I personally feel that the global warming issue should be taken with utmost seriousness by every human alive. As adults, what are we really leaving behind for our future generations? In the painting the land shown is dry and barren, implying the desert we are leaving behind for our kids. Visual art is a powerful medium to express and to be heard and my effort here is to make my anguish over climate change known.
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