Reflection

Reflection

Nobody can say with ease that we live in a happy world. As a generation, we have grown up with the responsibility and guilt of what humanity has done to this planet. My artwork, named “The Orchestra,” pays homage to my generation and the chaos we were left to fix. It depicts a row of teenage girls at the bottom, each with a singular red object. The objects in order from left to right: film reel, pencil, plane icon and earphones. These objects represent chronologically: filmography, writing, travel, music. Each a trait that the person identifies with and what many of us enjoy, excluding the middle figure. The figure at the centre can be symbolic of me or anyone who is burdened with the knowledge of global warming, ocean pollution, poaching; how we are the cause of it all. And that we cannot think of our interests because we have to fix what everyone else before shrugged off as ‘progress.’ This is shown by the expansion of an ocean dream-scape that dominates the entire artwork. It flows and hangs above the row of girls, much like an invisible burden that we carry with us. This artwork is meant to show the magnitude and impact of our responsibility as this generation as well as the burden of realizing our destruction as humanity. It is only fitting that I called the artwork, “The Orchestra” because it seems we are in the final number of our existence on this planet.