Maps and Graphs

Over the past few years, I have been working on an ever-growing series of small paintings representing maps of the cities that have had the most significant growth and development in modern history (City Maps Cloud, 2018-). Recreating a timeline of urban growth, for me is way to emphasise the key role that migration has played in the foundation of societies and how it is at the heart of civilisation.

The focus of some of my recent works has been the climate crisis and its relation to the urban environment. I have been researching on highly populated cities that have been the most affected by climate change and that might become inhabitable in the future due to flooding, sea level rising, pollution or high temperatures.

I am therefore creating negative copies of the maps from the City Maps Cloud series where the cities are left blank to represent their absence in the future, this ongoing project is titled Maps Erased.

Breathing Earth deals with those natural environments that have been affected by climate change, that nevertheless hold the potential to counteract human induced damage to the earth. The series is made of 16 pictures representing 8 of the fastest receding glaciers and 8 of the most active volcanoes globally. I used iron powder and its oxidation to suggest natural processes of erosion. Though underscored by dark undertones, the work takes on a positive connotation by reflecting on volcanoes’ eruptions and their role in cooling down global warming. 

Flicker represents the “breathing pattern” of the earth through volcanic activity.
I looked into the numbers of eruptions from the most active volcanoes in the world over the last 100 years, and used the data to create a timeline. The timeline shows what has been “earth’s breathing pattern” during that time. The intensity of the light in each panel corresponds to the quantity of eruptions in a period of time.
The light grows more intense because climate change is causing more volcanoes to erupt.

With my work, I intend to make the audience look beyond the romanticised landscape and engage with the science, the history and the social climate that is colouring the very scenery we lay our eyes on.