This comment was written by John Wong on 14 Apr 2021.

Micro-Landscapes of the Anthropocene

Path 1 of 2: The Anthropocene through art – paintings, poetry, photos, ceramics and sculpture.

Art, in its various forms – visual, literary, performative – plays an important role in ecocriticism. These forms represent different modes of thought expression, which can be at once beautiful as well as dystrophic; gentle persuasion and despotic. They can be as vigorous and urgent as a propagandas, a manisfesto, a summon; or they can be as meditative and empathetic as a love poem, a watercolour, an alpine symphony. All are capable of evoking ecological thoughts in an individual, or exhorting a sense of ecological duty in politicians and captains of society. The following chapters represent my own learning journey in the Anthropocene. The first is about a painting, a parody of humanism – an anthropocentric unitary self – who tries to look beyond the darkness that entraps him, to search for meanings in the wider cosmos. 

Chapter 1  

A Painting

The notion of ‘marginal worlds’ and ‘subterranean worlds’ resonates with a sentiment I tried to express in a recent acrylic painting of mine (Man’s vision, 2021).

In Encyclopedia of Caves, Hüppop portrays the subterranean worlds exists in ‘continuous darkness … isolation and restriction in space,’ such as in subterranean caves. On the one hand, they offer a high degree of environmental stability and scarcity of predators – a ‘sanctuary’. But on the other, food is scare due to the lack of light and may be even water (unlike David Abrams’ drenched Balinese caves).

In The Roden Crater, Turrell posits the notion of vision, one that allows his visitors, in a lit-up cave, through a dormant volcanic crater, to look into a clear celestial sky.

In Man’s Vision, modern man still exist in a metaphorical darkness, articulated by the thick black paint that encases him; yet through the blue rectangle, the blueness of which is unchecked, a portal is open, to allow him to see with a relatively clear vision, from the human-centric world he is in, to the margin of the cosmos, to as far as he can see. However, as will be discussed later, this painting connotes humanism – unitarian selfhood and dualistic separations. In the current ecological thinking, this Anthropocentric notion is facing extinction of its own. 


                                           Man's Vision, acrylic on canvas, 2021 (91 x 61 cm)

Work cited

Agofure, Joyce Onoromhenre. "Art As Eco-Protest and Communication in Tenure Ojaide's Selected Poetry." Routledge Handbook of Ecocriticism and Environmental Communication. Routledge, 2019, pp. 187-198. https://www-routledgehandbooks-com.wwwproxy1.library.unsw.edu.au/doi/10.4324/9781315167343-17

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