On Floating Bodies
Below are installation shots of On Floating Bodies, this work was commissioned for the Xtra-Dimensional Printmaking Invitational exhibition at Nexus Gallery in Philadelphia. The exhibition was an independent project featured in Philagrafika 2010 and the SGC Philadelphia conference. Below is the statement that accompanied the piece.
On Floating Bodies
We do not want to leave the Maldives, but we also do not want to be climate refugees living in tents for decades.
-President Mohamed Nasheed, Maldives
More and more people are being forced to move. Yet fewer and fewer people are free to move. Countries are becoming fortresses at a time when markets need people.
-UN High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres
Any floating object displaces its own weight of fluid.
-Ἀρχιμήδης ( Archimedes of Syracuse)
Bangladesh, Kiribati, Maldives, Papua New Guinea, and Tuvalu are the first coastal countries to be seriously impacted by the rising sea levels attributed to climate change. These small island and coastal nations are already bracing for the impending diaspora. According to the UNHCR, in 2009 over 20 million people were forced to move do to climate change-related factors. At the same time wealthier nations are making it increasingly more difficult to seek asylum on their shores, in many cases imprisoning or deporting refugees.
While conceiving of this work I was thinking a lot about the way the mundane objects used to ship goods around the world could also be used to build boats.
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