for me it’s about how can I get people
to feel that effortless connection to
nature technically speaking this is all
part of a biological and evolutionary
development this is our a story
no matter what we do to the world life
still finds a way to express itself that
is pure magic to me that is nature
finding expression against all the odds
that we impress upon it that to me is
hope people often ask me if I find it to
be a bit of a contradiction
being such an impassioned advocate for
wilderness and wildlife yet choosing to
reside in the most curated habitat for a
man New York City and I often reply to
them not particularly so because while I
can understand that living in a city
easily loves people to disengage
themselves from the realities of the
world around them I think it is the very
same city that has helped me find this
intrinsic connection no matter how far
removed I am from nature to nature so
when I walk home from the gym on a fine
Friday evening through Madison Square
Park the smallest patch of green in New
York and I encounter fireflies flitting
about in a dusk that is pure magic to me
that is nature finding expression
against all the odds that we impress
upon it that to me is hope and that
shows me that life is resilient which
inspires me to do what I do so when the
BP oil spill happened I felt compelled
to participate to take the dialogue a
step further than just feeling like this
passive voice in a much larger system
because an individual does have impact
granted that it’s you know a small drop
in the ocean but every drop counts and I
think together we build up a lot much
larger momentum and when the BP oil
spill happened at that point I was in
the peak of my fashion career so I was
just launched a label I wanted to take
that the next step forward but then when
this unfolded I was just completely
debilitated I was in my bed sobbing for
about a month and I realized that I
couldn’t just go on with my life turning
a blind eye to what was happening in my
immediate reality and just being a
victim to what seemed at that time a
failing system don’t get me wrong I
still think it’s a failing system but I
feel like I have
larger voice and stake in what is
happening around me simply on account of
taking responsibility and this
particular work along with six others
that I created Castle I own how we feel
a life with death and it was a way for
me to condense information and package
it into the simplest format possible
something that’s two dimensional
contrasts positive space with negative
space which is to say you know what
remains what’s worth protecting and what
has been lost forever
because unless you show people what is
there against what isn’t there is no
contrast there’s no understanding of the
baseline that is shifted which seems to
be the constant problem with the
generation today they just don’t know
that we have lost so much in the last 10
years in the last 20 years and when I
created these works I decided to take
that leap of faith which led me to
Africa and I spent the entire two months
that we were there basically on a
one-woman crusade picking up garbage
everywhere I went and I would drop it
off a different range of posts every
evening you do this for a week and word
travels because the next thing I knew
when I was shifting from one resort to
the next people would call ahead and
tell her tell them like she’s going to
come and inspect your sewage plan how
you dispose of your waste and she’s
gonna take issue with everything so be
prepared she’s coming over and and so
they would welcome me and show me I had
a curb they’d be like this is what you
need to see and I’m like no I’m gonna do
to my terms and I would see what I want
to see what I want to see it but it’s
just the idea of one person having that
voice and that traveling within two
months across the board in Tanzania and
Kenya so much that people thought I was
part of the UN by then that I was with
affiliate with numerous other
organizations that I was in on this like
inside a conspiracy bust and what that
culminated in was me coming back to New
York with a whole lot of garbage which
was a really interesting conversation
with TSA and I wound up you know
clearing immigration somehow and wound
up in New York and I used all his
garbage to create a line of artwork
called shadowed heirlooms and the entire
series focused on how infrastructure
growth and population growth was
infringing upon wild habitats and how
all of the trees that I saw the open
grasslands that we think of when we
think of the Dark Continent and lost
wilderness of Africa is completely the
strewn and bejeweled with plastic bags
and consumers brand packaging from
European and American markets so I would
see L’Oreal I would see Tampax I would
see diaper bags
cosmetic companies things that you were
recognized from here in Africa in the
open grassland and zebras and giraffes
chewing on this and that’s not what you
think of when you think of Africa and
that was such a shame and it really
broke my heart and so I created this
line of work which led me to meet Louisa
Harris and Ric O’Barry shortly after
like I said the path of least resistance
and that opened up a whole different
dialogue which was all about oceans and
what was happening to cetaceans being
exploited for spectacle so this whole
idea of not just capturing dolphins and
and orcas to show them in these confined
spaces where they held it for long
periods of time
completely abused and out of context
because they have a large social context
these are highly sentient beings that
know how to relate on a deep emotional
level and they live in a culture sort of
us how humans do and to pull them out of
that whole context and show them as
one-off is not is to take away the very
essence and spirit of that animal is to
break that spirit and so they’re just
shadows of what cetaceans would be in
the wild in captivity so when you go to
SeaWorld and you support that show
you’re not getting any kind of education
all you’re seeing is an orca that is not
an orca anymore that has been completely
broken in every form that’s possible
psychologically traumatized and and
you’re paying a dollar for that and
that’s not okay and if we don’t condone
slavery and we don’t condone this sort
of abuse and human beings we shouldn’t
be doing that for other species so I
decided to get involved with this whole
campaign and created a series of works
and once again trying to condense and
fold information into two-dimensional
layouts that will immediately translate
in a glimpse to the largest audience
possible so this was as simple as
interpreting what the Japanese flag
would look like by placing sort of a
bloody spot that’s bleeding out in the
center of the flag and that also spells
the word The Cove and but only did I see
garbage unfolding in Africa but every
time I went scuba diving or snorkeling
in any ecosystem all I encountered was
plastic and so I started creating these
simple animations this is the other
aspect of my career that I haven’t told
very many people is that I don’t know
how to do half the things I do and so
when I wake up thank God for Google and
thank thank God for like how-to for
dummies because if I didn’t like look up
these like simple
tutorials there would be no way in which
I even knew how to animate so this
particular animation is one of my early
animation just to connect consumer
choices and a simple things such as
acquiring a plastic bag in your life and
how that translates into affecting a
larger ecosystem in our world
and so as I was saying earlier with life
being resilient I mean this and this is
the other thing I have to say about my
life is that most of the mail I get is
just garbage and one thing that I got
recently is a plastic bottle from Long
Island that was covered in barnacles so
this is once again a sign of life being
resilient so no matter what we do to the
world life still finds a way to express
itself all we need to do is give it a
chance so for me it’s about how can I
get people to feel that it’s this
connection to nature and one of the
things that I did is starting to embed
data that is otherwise hard for a
layperson to feel a visceral connection
with through what I can create and this
particular image is a time place because
it shows you a boat at every hour which
shows you that exploitation occurs
around the clock day and night but also
the fact that there’s a pie chart
embedded within it through dotted black
lines and only 3% of global fisheries is
in recovery the rest of it is either
moderately exploited heavily exploited
or just going extinct on the brink of
extinction that is not okay especially
when over 1 billion people in the world
rely on fish as a protein source and
this particular image just shows you
what’s wrong with this picture all of
the life that is in the ocean is
actually on land taking it a step
further getting people to connect with
the idea of barcodes you know the fact
that we slap on a barcode on to any
living creature and then selling it we
sell everything we can get our hands on
and we say that should we somehow single
out china and say that china is the one
who’s doing this it’s not one nation
it’s not one type of people we all do it
so the other work that I started
creating the other line of work I
started creating is along the lines of
climate change because habitat loss and
the fact that weather patterns are
shifting locally is resulting in species
migrating early and not having the food
supply they need to nourish themselves
so they can go to the next stop so it’s
like along the way the entire chain gets
broken and this particular work is about
how climate can watch for itself if it
could but since I can we need
take a stand for it and climate March is
not just about climate it’s about
biodiversity loss and decline of
wildlife in wilderness areas around the
world and so rising sea levels is not
just a threat to us it’s the threat to
every type of organism things that we
have not even discovered yet there are
five species up top and exclamation
marks because their recent discoveries
and beneath that is all the species we
have known off that are in question
heading towards the brink of extinction
and on the last row you have species
that are being driven to extinction in
the last five years including the
Western black rhinoceros and the job and
tiger and this is the same fate that
faces all the other megafauna in
question so then I decided to take the
opportunity that was given to me to
create a Faberge egg for the big egg
hunt to speak to these issues and I
created this particular image called the
ice storm egg which shows you a sandy
hurricane satellite image it’s the eye
of the storm and on top of that I’ve
overlaid by diversity eyes of
biodiversity from around the world
including human beings so you see all
these eyes staring back at you there
with silent witnesses to what’s
happening to their habitat to the world
around them and this particular egg I’m
actually kind of build on it further
because one of the things I think that’s
lacking is that we think it’s gonna be
okay that somehow we’re gonna get
through this technology we’ll come up
with an answer there’s some shortcut
that we’re gonna hit there isn’t gonna
be any and unless we understand that
this distant cataclysmic future is a
closer reality something that’s palpable
in the immediate future we’re never
gonna really get down to doing something
about it so one of the ideas we’re
bouncing around with the whole bunch of
people is this idea of creating a black
box a sensory deprivation chamber and
within the black box I’m gonna put place
this egg and have an immersive
soundtrack that is going to basically be
different audio channels of wild calls
and the closer a person gets to the egg
the more those wild calls will start
diminishing and then you’ll have that
being replaced by anthropogenic noise
and there’s going to be a tipping point
in place so when there’s enough
anthropogenic noise replacing the audio
channels of wild calls it’s gonna
trigger a hurricane so you realize that
it’s your interaction with that egg
that’s resulting in that hurricane and
the other aspect of this is also going
to be that the there’s going to be a
video installation along the walls so
I’m going to place
an entire track of eyes opening and
closing from around the world and those
two will go we’ll go talk as we get
closer to the egg and as you’re
triggering the hurricane ultimately
resulting in a completely black chamber
devoid of sound devoid of life and
that’s what we’re resulting in so I
think if you’re in that space for even a
moment you’re going to realize that that
dead zone was created by you and that’s
the kind of dead zone you’re
perpetuating in the world around you so
that has led me because like since I
don’t say no to any of the issues it
keeps leading me further down the rabbit
hole and this tumble has led me to the
Denver ivory crush which the whole
intent behind it was to destroy the
stockpile and I put that within quotes
because that’s not what has happened
eventually
they recently announced a design
challenge a call to artists and
designers to create something out of
this crushed ivory and many people
including me run it back when I went to
it I thought when they were going to
crush the ivory that it was going to be
completely powdered like like utterly
destroyed and that’s not what happened
you have giant shards of I read that can
still be used for something so anything
that’s cast out of this material is
still gonna look beautiful even though
they say it’s educational which by the
way is gonna be the next big loophole
that Asian markets are going to exploit
educational use of ivory I mean how are
you gonna define that in other markets
it’s hard enough to regulate this
illicit trade up to trade that basically
allows for death to perpetuate and mass
fifty thousand elephants call their for
this particular product that is not even
really needed in any capacity by human
beings it doesn’t it’s not integral to
our survival and the other thing with
that is the ban of the moratorium when
you have a moratorium in place all it
says is the market is closed for now and
the doors will open eventually so the
prices will build in the meanwhile and
you can just hold onto your stockpile
and release it when the time is right
and with a ban it says you’re you made
the investment this is over get over
yourself and it’s done you know we’re
not gonna kill any more elephants for
this ridiculous trade right now the
trade what it’s doing is infringing upon
not only their habitat but also killing
the individuals that are part of an
integral part of a functioning society
of elephants so that a lot that there’s
also no loss of information being handed
down from generation to generation so
all you’re looking at when you look at a
herd when you go on safari now is
some adults and and their calves it’s
like looking at teenage mothers with
kids and they don’t know what to do with
them and that’s not an elephant society
that’s not an elephant herd as it used
to be 50 years ago 100 years ago so when
people come to me and say you know what
do I do with the piece of ivory that I
have in my house a belt buckle or a
statue you know it’s like the entire
argument if you don’t destroy it you
have it in your house in any capacity
whether it’s pre moratorium a post
moratorium it doesn’t matter because
ultimately what you’re doing is saying
that it’s okay to have ivory in some way
and that it’s okay to encourage the
death of an elephant for this and that’s
not okay because when you wear fur from
the past you’re saying it’s okay to
scale up demand in the present for that
product a product that is not integral
to us or to our survival and so with the
ivory crush now I’m trying to suggest
that we cremate the the crushed raw
material and use the cremated material
to cast a memorial instead of creating a
sculpture of any sort because with a
memorial at least you have a space that
people could come to to mourn loss as
opposed to just look at something that’s
beautiful and supposedly educational and
it’s like how do you use the right
vocabulary to reach new demographic
because there’s no point preaching to
the choir and for that you need to
figure out how you package your
information and what you’re trying to
say through it so this particular work I
it’s a peek preview it’s not released
yet and I started working with Derek and
Beverly’s jubair who are explorers and
residents here to cast a light on what’s
happening to rhinos in Kruger National
Park which is a high perching incidents
area and we’re trying to currently
translocate a hundred rhinos from Kruger
to Botswana and so this particular
animation is going to cast a light on
how we can go about you know funding and
helping their efforts on the field
so reinterpreting the Rhino out of the
IO icon reaches engineers like my
roommates boyfriend who came into the
room for the first time in his life was
suddenly awakened and like was actively
engaged by what was happening two rhinos
for the first time he was asking me
information about what was happening to
rhinos in Kruger National Park with this
particular image I tried to get the cat
to stare back to connect to the audience
member – to the viewer it’s about
extending what the cat can do for itself
because it’s its voice it has a voice
they’re not moistness it’s just that
we’re not listening
and with big caps in specific it’s
becoming a recent passion of mine simply
because of the way in which we have
allowed for a lot of things to happen
with them and now this model is being
suggested as a replicable model for
rhinos and other species to form Tigers
is not okay to farm any wildlife is not
okay and we’re just standing by as China
continues to have Tiger farms upon Tiger
farms Thailand Vietnam and they have
5,000 tigers in captivity right now and
they’re kept in appalling conditions
like sardines in a can so this
particular trade for Tiger bone wine and
tiger bone cake has become a recent
focus of mine simply because it’s not
just about Tigers they’re also
harvesting lions in Africa for the bone
trade and neither of these things have
any medicinal value has any kind of
value for the human being and honestly
speaking every single thing that we
create can have a synthetic version that
is generated in a lab because we’re
capable of innovation so it’s really
discrediting us and our ability to be
the intelligent species we’re not being
intelligent at all and every Tiger is
perfect it has to be because it’s the
only way that it’s going to function in
the ecosystem it was born for to predate
and do what a tiger
only a tiger can do and so to take that
away from a tiger by replacing the
stripes with bars and placing it behind
those bars is to break the very essence
of a tiger just as we broke the essence
of an orca by placing it within a tank
and to take that a step further talking
about how species connect to the land
and how they sculpt and change the
fabric of that land and how that land
ties back into the essence and core of a
tiger it’s back and forth there’s a
there’s a give-and-take in that
relationship which we don’t understand
at all so we think we think we can play
sort of God with the entire context
right we can pull things out put things
in shoot things down it’s all good it’ll
recover it’ll figure itself out because
we know best we don’t know anything and
when we don’t have the humility to
acknowledge that so this particular work
once again cast a light on sort of how
the ecosystem the Savannah the grassland
is an implicit part of a line so it’s
all is a very tricky term to use because
it has religious connotations but like
there is a larger sense of self and
being within an animal that should be
acknowledged and tying that back into
the idea of you know are we willing to
be clear in our communication about how
we grant certain rights and personhood
to ourselves even to our corporations
but not willing to extend that towards
animals we keep them in vertical bars
and vertical stripes but we keep
horizontal stripes and freedom for
ourselves and why is that why do we have
this bifurcated view of how we associate
with our own selves because technically
speaking this is all part of a
biological and evolutionary development
this is our story and we’re just
fragmenting parts of ourselves and
saying that we can’t afford those rights
and extend those rights to other beings
and that’s just incomplete as a picture
so these images again show that we’ve
taken the voice away from wildlife but
we managed to take a stand for ourselves
so everything happens in relation to us
and currently there’s a court case going
on – basically cast a light on the need
to impart rights to animals at least to
certain animals that have been proved to
have higher cognitive functions so
cetaceans elephants and great apes so
this is about giving equality to both
man and ape and the reason why I did it
in blue and red is for the Republican
and Democratic vote and the image to the
other side is called deep rooted truths
because it connects
to the tree of life and also to the DNA
the helix that shows our evolution and
how we connect to nature on sort of an
inherent cellular level and that we are
in balance with a much larger system if
we choose to be and this particular
image I actually created as part of the
same series so you’ll notice the same
colors you know trickling through and
trickling across and the reason why I
created this was because I went on a
dive in Isla Mujeres and I saw a silent
evolution which is an artwork of
sculptures that have been dropped into
the ocean and the byrock allows for
corals to grow on it and I love the way
in which life found expression again on
a human form and extended from the human
form and reached back into its ecosystem
and interacted with other species so I
found this way of showing that we’re all
made of the same stuff and that we all
flow in and out of one another for me we
were awake for it and tying that further
into the cladogram so it’s sort of our
lineage and our larger stories so this
is where we come from this is who we are
and if it was a part of our past it
should be part of our present and future
and so by granting these rights to wild
what we’re doing is acknowledging who we
really are
and granting those rights in its
entirety to ourselves in the end I think
the reason why I do everything that I do
is because I want to influence the one
thing that I know will have impact on on
nature and the fate of nature going
forward and that’s you so if you don’t
hold yourselves accountable and you
don’t plug yourselves into this dialogue
there is no hope you can have numerous
people coming up here and giving these
speeches but that doesn’t translate into
anything unless you yourself get
involved and stop part-timing
conservation thank you
you
to feel that effortless connection to
nature technically speaking this is all
part of a biological and evolutionary
development this is our a story
no matter what we do to the world life
still finds a way to express itself that
is pure magic to me that is nature
finding expression against all the odds
that we impress upon it that to me is
hope people often ask me if I find it to
be a bit of a contradiction
being such an impassioned advocate for
wilderness and wildlife yet choosing to
reside in the most curated habitat for a
man New York City and I often reply to
them not particularly so because while I
can understand that living in a city
easily loves people to disengage
themselves from the realities of the
world around them I think it is the very
same city that has helped me find this
intrinsic connection no matter how far
removed I am from nature to nature so
when I walk home from the gym on a fine
Friday evening through Madison Square
Park the smallest patch of green in New
York and I encounter fireflies flitting
about in a dusk that is pure magic to me
that is nature finding expression
against all the odds that we impress
upon it that to me is hope and that
shows me that life is resilient which
inspires me to do what I do so when the
BP oil spill happened I felt compelled
to participate to take the dialogue a
step further than just feeling like this
passive voice in a much larger system
because an individual does have impact
granted that it’s you know a small drop
in the ocean but every drop counts and I
think together we build up a lot much
larger momentum and when the BP oil
spill happened at that point I was in
the peak of my fashion career so I was
just launched a label I wanted to take
that the next step forward but then when
this unfolded I was just completely
debilitated I was in my bed sobbing for
about a month and I realized that I
couldn’t just go on with my life turning
a blind eye to what was happening in my
immediate reality and just being a
victim to what seemed at that time a
failing system don’t get me wrong I
still think it’s a failing system but I
feel like I have
larger voice and stake in what is
happening around me simply on account of
taking responsibility and this
particular work along with six others
that I created Castle I own how we feel
a life with death and it was a way for
me to condense information and package
it into the simplest format possible
something that’s two dimensional
contrasts positive space with negative
space which is to say you know what
remains what’s worth protecting and what
has been lost forever
because unless you show people what is
there against what isn’t there is no
contrast there’s no understanding of the
baseline that is shifted which seems to
be the constant problem with the
generation today they just don’t know
that we have lost so much in the last 10
years in the last 20 years and when I
created these works I decided to take
that leap of faith which led me to
Africa and I spent the entire two months
that we were there basically on a
one-woman crusade picking up garbage
everywhere I went and I would drop it
off a different range of posts every
evening you do this for a week and word
travels because the next thing I knew
when I was shifting from one resort to
the next people would call ahead and
tell her tell them like she’s going to
come and inspect your sewage plan how
you dispose of your waste and she’s
gonna take issue with everything so be
prepared she’s coming over and and so
they would welcome me and show me I had
a curb they’d be like this is what you
need to see and I’m like no I’m gonna do
to my terms and I would see what I want
to see what I want to see it but it’s
just the idea of one person having that
voice and that traveling within two
months across the board in Tanzania and
Kenya so much that people thought I was
part of the UN by then that I was with
affiliate with numerous other
organizations that I was in on this like
inside a conspiracy bust and what that
culminated in was me coming back to New
York with a whole lot of garbage which
was a really interesting conversation
with TSA and I wound up you know
clearing immigration somehow and wound
up in New York and I used all his
garbage to create a line of artwork
called shadowed heirlooms and the entire
series focused on how infrastructure
growth and population growth was
infringing upon wild habitats and how
all of the trees that I saw the open
grasslands that we think of when we
think of the Dark Continent and lost
wilderness of Africa is completely the
strewn and bejeweled with plastic bags
and consumers brand packaging from
European and American markets so I would
see L’Oreal I would see Tampax I would
see diaper bags
cosmetic companies things that you were
recognized from here in Africa in the
open grassland and zebras and giraffes
chewing on this and that’s not what you
think of when you think of Africa and
that was such a shame and it really
broke my heart and so I created this
line of work which led me to meet Louisa
Harris and Ric O’Barry shortly after
like I said the path of least resistance
and that opened up a whole different
dialogue which was all about oceans and
what was happening to cetaceans being
exploited for spectacle so this whole
idea of not just capturing dolphins and
and orcas to show them in these confined
spaces where they held it for long
periods of time
completely abused and out of context
because they have a large social context
these are highly sentient beings that
know how to relate on a deep emotional
level and they live in a culture sort of
us how humans do and to pull them out of
that whole context and show them as
one-off is not is to take away the very
essence and spirit of that animal is to
break that spirit and so they’re just
shadows of what cetaceans would be in
the wild in captivity so when you go to
SeaWorld and you support that show
you’re not getting any kind of education
all you’re seeing is an orca that is not
an orca anymore that has been completely
broken in every form that’s possible
psychologically traumatized and and
you’re paying a dollar for that and
that’s not okay and if we don’t condone
slavery and we don’t condone this sort
of abuse and human beings we shouldn’t
be doing that for other species so I
decided to get involved with this whole
campaign and created a series of works
and once again trying to condense and
fold information into two-dimensional
layouts that will immediately translate
in a glimpse to the largest audience
possible so this was as simple as
interpreting what the Japanese flag
would look like by placing sort of a
bloody spot that’s bleeding out in the
center of the flag and that also spells
the word The Cove and but only did I see
garbage unfolding in Africa but every
time I went scuba diving or snorkeling
in any ecosystem all I encountered was
plastic and so I started creating these
simple animations this is the other
aspect of my career that I haven’t told
very many people is that I don’t know
how to do half the things I do and so
when I wake up thank God for Google and
thank thank God for like how-to for
dummies because if I didn’t like look up
these like simple
tutorials there would be no way in which
I even knew how to animate so this
particular animation is one of my early
animation just to connect consumer
choices and a simple things such as
acquiring a plastic bag in your life and
how that translates into affecting a
larger ecosystem in our world
and so as I was saying earlier with life
being resilient I mean this and this is
the other thing I have to say about my
life is that most of the mail I get is
just garbage and one thing that I got
recently is a plastic bottle from Long
Island that was covered in barnacles so
this is once again a sign of life being
resilient so no matter what we do to the
world life still finds a way to express
itself all we need to do is give it a
chance so for me it’s about how can I
get people to feel that it’s this
connection to nature and one of the
things that I did is starting to embed
data that is otherwise hard for a
layperson to feel a visceral connection
with through what I can create and this
particular image is a time place because
it shows you a boat at every hour which
shows you that exploitation occurs
around the clock day and night but also
the fact that there’s a pie chart
embedded within it through dotted black
lines and only 3% of global fisheries is
in recovery the rest of it is either
moderately exploited heavily exploited
or just going extinct on the brink of
extinction that is not okay especially
when over 1 billion people in the world
rely on fish as a protein source and
this particular image just shows you
what’s wrong with this picture all of
the life that is in the ocean is
actually on land taking it a step
further getting people to connect with
the idea of barcodes you know the fact
that we slap on a barcode on to any
living creature and then selling it we
sell everything we can get our hands on
and we say that should we somehow single
out china and say that china is the one
who’s doing this it’s not one nation
it’s not one type of people we all do it
so the other work that I started
creating the other line of work I
started creating is along the lines of
climate change because habitat loss and
the fact that weather patterns are
shifting locally is resulting in species
migrating early and not having the food
supply they need to nourish themselves
so they can go to the next stop so it’s
like along the way the entire chain gets
broken and this particular work is about
how climate can watch for itself if it
could but since I can we need
take a stand for it and climate March is
not just about climate it’s about
biodiversity loss and decline of
wildlife in wilderness areas around the
world and so rising sea levels is not
just a threat to us it’s the threat to
every type of organism things that we
have not even discovered yet there are
five species up top and exclamation
marks because their recent discoveries
and beneath that is all the species we
have known off that are in question
heading towards the brink of extinction
and on the last row you have species
that are being driven to extinction in
the last five years including the
Western black rhinoceros and the job and
tiger and this is the same fate that
faces all the other megafauna in
question so then I decided to take the
opportunity that was given to me to
create a Faberge egg for the big egg
hunt to speak to these issues and I
created this particular image called the
ice storm egg which shows you a sandy
hurricane satellite image it’s the eye
of the storm and on top of that I’ve
overlaid by diversity eyes of
biodiversity from around the world
including human beings so you see all
these eyes staring back at you there
with silent witnesses to what’s
happening to their habitat to the world
around them and this particular egg I’m
actually kind of build on it further
because one of the things I think that’s
lacking is that we think it’s gonna be
okay that somehow we’re gonna get
through this technology we’ll come up
with an answer there’s some shortcut
that we’re gonna hit there isn’t gonna
be any and unless we understand that
this distant cataclysmic future is a
closer reality something that’s palpable
in the immediate future we’re never
gonna really get down to doing something
about it so one of the ideas we’re
bouncing around with the whole bunch of
people is this idea of creating a black
box a sensory deprivation chamber and
within the black box I’m gonna put place
this egg and have an immersive
soundtrack that is going to basically be
different audio channels of wild calls
and the closer a person gets to the egg
the more those wild calls will start
diminishing and then you’ll have that
being replaced by anthropogenic noise
and there’s going to be a tipping point
in place so when there’s enough
anthropogenic noise replacing the audio
channels of wild calls it’s gonna
trigger a hurricane so you realize that
it’s your interaction with that egg
that’s resulting in that hurricane and
the other aspect of this is also going
to be that the there’s going to be a
video installation along the walls so
I’m going to place
an entire track of eyes opening and
closing from around the world and those
two will go we’ll go talk as we get
closer to the egg and as you’re
triggering the hurricane ultimately
resulting in a completely black chamber
devoid of sound devoid of life and
that’s what we’re resulting in so I
think if you’re in that space for even a
moment you’re going to realize that that
dead zone was created by you and that’s
the kind of dead zone you’re
perpetuating in the world around you so
that has led me because like since I
don’t say no to any of the issues it
keeps leading me further down the rabbit
hole and this tumble has led me to the
Denver ivory crush which the whole
intent behind it was to destroy the
stockpile and I put that within quotes
because that’s not what has happened
eventually
they recently announced a design
challenge a call to artists and
designers to create something out of
this crushed ivory and many people
including me run it back when I went to
it I thought when they were going to
crush the ivory that it was going to be
completely powdered like like utterly
destroyed and that’s not what happened
you have giant shards of I read that can
still be used for something so anything
that’s cast out of this material is
still gonna look beautiful even though
they say it’s educational which by the
way is gonna be the next big loophole
that Asian markets are going to exploit
educational use of ivory I mean how are
you gonna define that in other markets
it’s hard enough to regulate this
illicit trade up to trade that basically
allows for death to perpetuate and mass
fifty thousand elephants call their for
this particular product that is not even
really needed in any capacity by human
beings it doesn’t it’s not integral to
our survival and the other thing with
that is the ban of the moratorium when
you have a moratorium in place all it
says is the market is closed for now and
the doors will open eventually so the
prices will build in the meanwhile and
you can just hold onto your stockpile
and release it when the time is right
and with a ban it says you’re you made
the investment this is over get over
yourself and it’s done you know we’re
not gonna kill any more elephants for
this ridiculous trade right now the
trade what it’s doing is infringing upon
not only their habitat but also killing
the individuals that are part of an
integral part of a functioning society
of elephants so that a lot that there’s
also no loss of information being handed
down from generation to generation so
all you’re looking at when you look at a
herd when you go on safari now is
some adults and and their calves it’s
like looking at teenage mothers with
kids and they don’t know what to do with
them and that’s not an elephant society
that’s not an elephant herd as it used
to be 50 years ago 100 years ago so when
people come to me and say you know what
do I do with the piece of ivory that I
have in my house a belt buckle or a
statue you know it’s like the entire
argument if you don’t destroy it you
have it in your house in any capacity
whether it’s pre moratorium a post
moratorium it doesn’t matter because
ultimately what you’re doing is saying
that it’s okay to have ivory in some way
and that it’s okay to encourage the
death of an elephant for this and that’s
not okay because when you wear fur from
the past you’re saying it’s okay to
scale up demand in the present for that
product a product that is not integral
to us or to our survival and so with the
ivory crush now I’m trying to suggest
that we cremate the the crushed raw
material and use the cremated material
to cast a memorial instead of creating a
sculpture of any sort because with a
memorial at least you have a space that
people could come to to mourn loss as
opposed to just look at something that’s
beautiful and supposedly educational and
it’s like how do you use the right
vocabulary to reach new demographic
because there’s no point preaching to
the choir and for that you need to
figure out how you package your
information and what you’re trying to
say through it so this particular work I
it’s a peek preview it’s not released
yet and I started working with Derek and
Beverly’s jubair who are explorers and
residents here to cast a light on what’s
happening to rhinos in Kruger National
Park which is a high perching incidents
area and we’re trying to currently
translocate a hundred rhinos from Kruger
to Botswana and so this particular
animation is going to cast a light on
how we can go about you know funding and
helping their efforts on the field
so reinterpreting the Rhino out of the
IO icon reaches engineers like my
roommates boyfriend who came into the
room for the first time in his life was
suddenly awakened and like was actively
engaged by what was happening two rhinos
for the first time he was asking me
information about what was happening to
rhinos in Kruger National Park with this
particular image I tried to get the cat
to stare back to connect to the audience
member – to the viewer it’s about
extending what the cat can do for itself
because it’s its voice it has a voice
they’re not moistness it’s just that
we’re not listening
and with big caps in specific it’s
becoming a recent passion of mine simply
because of the way in which we have
allowed for a lot of things to happen
with them and now this model is being
suggested as a replicable model for
rhinos and other species to form Tigers
is not okay to farm any wildlife is not
okay and we’re just standing by as China
continues to have Tiger farms upon Tiger
farms Thailand Vietnam and they have
5,000 tigers in captivity right now and
they’re kept in appalling conditions
like sardines in a can so this
particular trade for Tiger bone wine and
tiger bone cake has become a recent
focus of mine simply because it’s not
just about Tigers they’re also
harvesting lions in Africa for the bone
trade and neither of these things have
any medicinal value has any kind of
value for the human being and honestly
speaking every single thing that we
create can have a synthetic version that
is generated in a lab because we’re
capable of innovation so it’s really
discrediting us and our ability to be
the intelligent species we’re not being
intelligent at all and every Tiger is
perfect it has to be because it’s the
only way that it’s going to function in
the ecosystem it was born for to predate
and do what a tiger
only a tiger can do and so to take that
away from a tiger by replacing the
stripes with bars and placing it behind
those bars is to break the very essence
of a tiger just as we broke the essence
of an orca by placing it within a tank
and to take that a step further talking
about how species connect to the land
and how they sculpt and change the
fabric of that land and how that land
ties back into the essence and core of a
tiger it’s back and forth there’s a
there’s a give-and-take in that
relationship which we don’t understand
at all so we think we think we can play
sort of God with the entire context
right we can pull things out put things
in shoot things down it’s all good it’ll
recover it’ll figure itself out because
we know best we don’t know anything and
when we don’t have the humility to
acknowledge that so this particular work
once again cast a light on sort of how
the ecosystem the Savannah the grassland
is an implicit part of a line so it’s
all is a very tricky term to use because
it has religious connotations but like
there is a larger sense of self and
being within an animal that should be
acknowledged and tying that back into
the idea of you know are we willing to
be clear in our communication about how
we grant certain rights and personhood
to ourselves even to our corporations
but not willing to extend that towards
animals we keep them in vertical bars
and vertical stripes but we keep
horizontal stripes and freedom for
ourselves and why is that why do we have
this bifurcated view of how we associate
with our own selves because technically
speaking this is all part of a
biological and evolutionary development
this is our story and we’re just
fragmenting parts of ourselves and
saying that we can’t afford those rights
and extend those rights to other beings
and that’s just incomplete as a picture
so these images again show that we’ve
taken the voice away from wildlife but
we managed to take a stand for ourselves
so everything happens in relation to us
and currently there’s a court case going
on – basically cast a light on the need
to impart rights to animals at least to
certain animals that have been proved to
have higher cognitive functions so
cetaceans elephants and great apes so
this is about giving equality to both
man and ape and the reason why I did it
in blue and red is for the Republican
and Democratic vote and the image to the
other side is called deep rooted truths
because it connects
to the tree of life and also to the DNA
the helix that shows our evolution and
how we connect to nature on sort of an
inherent cellular level and that we are
in balance with a much larger system if
we choose to be and this particular
image I actually created as part of the
same series so you’ll notice the same
colors you know trickling through and
trickling across and the reason why I
created this was because I went on a
dive in Isla Mujeres and I saw a silent
evolution which is an artwork of
sculptures that have been dropped into
the ocean and the byrock allows for
corals to grow on it and I love the way
in which life found expression again on
a human form and extended from the human
form and reached back into its ecosystem
and interacted with other species so I
found this way of showing that we’re all
made of the same stuff and that we all
flow in and out of one another for me we
were awake for it and tying that further
into the cladogram so it’s sort of our
lineage and our larger stories so this
is where we come from this is who we are
and if it was a part of our past it
should be part of our present and future
and so by granting these rights to wild
what we’re doing is acknowledging who we
really are
and granting those rights in its
entirety to ourselves in the end I think
the reason why I do everything that I do
is because I want to influence the one
thing that I know will have impact on on
nature and the fate of nature going
forward and that’s you so if you don’t
hold yourselves accountable and you
don’t plug yourselves into this dialogue
there is no hope you can have numerous
people coming up here and giving these
speeches but that doesn’t translate into
anything unless you yourself get
involved and stop part-timing
conservation thank you
you
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