For her 2012 project Chasing the Light, Brooklyn artist Zaria Forman led an art expedition up the northwest coast of Greenland, retracing the 1869 journey of American painter William Bradford to document an Arctic landscape in flux. The results are collected in a series of exquisitely rendered pastel drawings of melting polar ice.
Forman’s latest collection of drawings, inspired by a trip to the Maldives in September 2013, continues with the climate change theme. As the lowest-lying nation in the world, the Maldives are especially vulnerable to the effects of global warming, a point Forman highlights beautifully with these hyper-realist finger paintings of the rising seas.
“I hope my drawings will raise awareness and invite viewers to share the urgency of the Maldivians’ predicament in a productive and hopeful way,” she writes. “I believe art can facilitate a deeper understanding of crises, helping us find meaning and optimism amidst shifting landscapes.”
As do we.
(via Faith is Torment)