If I didn’t know the context, I would have thought Charles Dickens was talking from the future about today when he said,
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair."
But it’s not a tale of two cities. We are sitting at the edge of a merciless precipice watching this mega drama unfolding on the global stage. The vanity and insolence endowed by technology, the humility offered by pandemic, and the looming fear of the climate crisis have turned this stage into a set for epic tragedy.
In the past century, humans have reached the height of technological advancement unprecedented in human history. All our gears and gizmos – from iPhone to Alexa, the latest algorithms of machine learning and artificial intelligence have made us feel indomitable, invincible and invulnerable. These are some feelings that slowly filled our collective conscience with subliminal arrogance.
Along came Corona. She took us all by surprise, dread, fear, and terror. This tiny little invisible organism has brought the whole world to its knee in just a matter of weeks. In the world of social media, ironically our greatest antidote for this pandemic had been “social distancing.”
We, the mighty homo sapiens, full of hubris and smugness, has just been bullied and about to have a serious self-esteem problem. To make matters worse, the mother nature that we have always turned to for our safety, serenity, and nourishment is not so pleased with us either.
The greater danger is lurking from just around the corner. Climate crisis is a catastrophe of mind-boggling grand scale and fixing it (if only possible) will be a long arduous process of redemption for our materialistic sins. It “is causing the loss of living species at a level comparable to the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. That event was believed to have been caused by a giant asteroid. This time it is not an asteroid colliding with the Earth and wreaking havoc: it is us.” [Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth] Climate crisis is the mother nature unleashing her fury in slow motion after decades of environmental abuse by us. She gave us plenty of signals, but we gleefully and arrogantly ignored.
This question is the genesis of my project for the BLOCK. The transition had been a constant theme in my paintings. I love to explore different dimensions of transitions – from physical to the spiritual realm, from darkness to light, from past to future. Continuing this theme I want to explore opportunities at the confluence of technology, pandemic, and climate crisis through abstract, surreal yet interactive pieces.
