Caterina Maina

Who Will Be Left When the Forests Burn and the Fields Flood?

BFA, Massachusetts College of Art and Design

Spring 2020

Who Will Be Left When the Forests Burn and the Fields Flood?

There is a detachment from reality. A disconnect in how we interact with and use the environment. Believing we are separate from the cause and excluded from the consequences, this superficial life is carried on with ignorance. I see the earth being tormented, with not enough done to protect it and the beings on it. It is said that we are coming to a point of no return, that what we do now decides our future. Through imagery and personal thoughts, I explore these feelings I have, as well as many other people my age. With a mixture of abstraction and artificial lighting, I transform the tone of landscapes, areas, and people within these images to produce an uneasiness within the viewer. The use of the figure in this work is important as a representation of the generation I am in, but also used in looking at the tension of the body in relation to our physical and social environment by physically connecting a figure to nature, or positioning them amongst the landscape in an unsettling way. Left feeling helpless, we are gripping to the roots of our lives and tying them to the trees and stones. We feel the dread and pressure of what is to come and the burden to do something to fix it. Placed within this space of reality and the surreal, I encourage the viewer to re-evaluate the relationship one has with the environment, the ideology we have formed around nature, and the impact many humans have had on the earth that will ultimately be our demise. My work examines the time period we are in, responding to the strain placed upon us, but also looks back on the past and the warnings we dismissed to no fault but our own.