We live in a time of rapidly degrading environmental change. In my creative research and practice, I am exploring how humans exist with extinction and grief as we manage our own survival and look for solutions, and I am interested in the ways that visual arts can open up these kinds of conversations. How can looking at non-humans be a vehicle for empathy? Can the human tendency to treat non-human persons with a narrow-minded anthropomorphism be reconfigured? What are the alternatives to this unsustainable reality? My work involves the creation of visual fables using interdisciplinary strategies to identify, forge and strengthen connections between human and non-human persons as an appeal to empathy and action during this time of climate emergency. I use humor, irony and wonder as tools to approach the unspeakable truths about our present and future, and continue to explore effective strategies for sparking conversations about the complexities of our necessary entanglements with the non-human world.
