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