Isabel Cotarelo

Amazonas is Burning series

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I don’t intend to narrate a story or make a statement with my art. However, the latest man-made fire in the Amazonas impacted me and created an inner conflict which I felt I had to share

The images of the burning Amazonas taken by the NASA satellite are aesthetically beautiful and filled with the poignancy of an ending world. I recently heard that the main character in the movie Ad Astra refers to humans as “world eaters,” and indeed greed is eating our planet.

The Amazon is the largest, most biodiverse forest in the world. It is indisputably one of the world’s greatest natural climate solutions due to its key role in global climate, and its significance as a critical source of freshwater. It is also vital to global rainfall patterns.

Back to those photographs from NASA: how could I admire something that reflects destruction, the end of flora, fauna and inhabitants of a vast, mostly unexplored part of the planet? It was that conflict that made me decide to use those pictures to create an homage to the beauty of the jungle and to add another cry to change to the long list of human beings already doing it.

The many things we do in our daily routines to help the planet are useful.  However, the danger the planet is experiencing is real and we, as members of the world community, must do everything in our power to elect and support those who believe that this is an existential crisis that can only be solved when the conduct and power of those who are profiting by destroying our planet with their greed cease to exist.

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A smaller version of this installation could be presently viewed at ArtBar Gallery in Kingston, NY.