Artists Involved in Environmental Movements and How They are Responding to the Climate Crisis
Tan Zi Xi
This Singaporean artist collected, cleaned, and organized 500 kg of discarded ocean plastic to create her Plastic Ocean Installation. The experiential exhibition, consisting of plastic detritus hanging motionless in space, seeks to illustrate how our global marine landscapes are being suffocated by plastic waste. With some plastic taking over 1,000 years to decompose, Tan Zi Xi’s unsettling display present a microcosm of the future state of our oceans if we do not act now.
Olafur Eliasson
Icelandic-Danish is another artist-activist creating ecologically minded sensorial experiences.
Ice Watch, a travelling show of glacial ice taken from the sea near Nuuk, Greenland, saw Olafur and a team of geologists navigate the chunks to great cities with the hope of this work would bring the urgent matter of melting glaciers closer to home.
Ai Weiwei
A recent exhibition of this Chinese artist and activist, ROOTS, saw large iron structures cast from the giant roots of Brazil’s Pequi Vinagreiro tree and capture the destruction of the Amazon rainforest
and the decimation of our Earth’s lungs. ROOTS illuminates also the damage done to the indigenous populations that rely on forests for home and sustenance.
Benjamin West
Collagist and photographer his works shift from the natural to the technological leading us to consider how disconnected we are become from Mother Earth. Nevertheless, subtle traces of harmony and hope allude to the idea that nature and technology can unite for a greener and more sustainable future.
