Meera George
Solastalgia- Eco Anxiety
‘Homesickness when you are still at home
The release of greenhouse gases, bleached coral reefs, and melting ice caps may seem like a distant problem with little or no effect on us. However, the health, economic, political and environmental implications of biospheric changes have a psychological impact on our collective. Whether the effects are direct from natural disasters, or more gradual from changing temperatures and rising sea levels that cause forced migration, starvation, and loss of livelihood; we are all impacted by the butterfly effect. Compounded stress from a changing environment, eco-migration and eco-anxiety affect community mental well-being through loss of social identity and cohesion, hostility, hopelessness and depression. This slow-growing cancer that highjacks our natural resources, that brings about changes in weather patterns is staring right at us.
The mixed-media works titled ‘emBlaze’ and ‘Blue’ are representative of our collective consciousness and where we are headed. What appears like a beautifully arranged patterned ecology is a denial of the sinister mutation sucking the goodness from our collective only to be replaced with despair, anxiety and loss. Burnt ecology and skeletal corals that were once a riot of colour, now bleached in time, stands as a pre-curser of what’s yet to come. Meticulously drawn needle-like gyres envelop expanse of pure fluid spaces (synonymous with the planet), like cancer that multiplies and steals all that’s good, leaving behind a carcass, of a memory of what once was.
The Earth will continue to evolve and cope, will we?
