Reflection

Reflection

“Blood on Our Hands” represents the irony of a casual trip to the grocery store, as a consumer shops for everyday items while witnessing the implications of these conveniences. The shopper picks each item packaged in single-use plastics, adding to a pile of suffering animals in the cart, and is oblivious to the damaged wildlife that is lurking in every section of the store. My motivation for this piece is to encourage everyone to think twice about the harm that is caused from a single shopping trip where we stock up on dozens of single-use plastics, choosing convenience and negatively influencing the environment. The grocery store showcases the impacts of plastic pollution on marine and Arctic biota, and the suffering caused by humans driving species to extinction, depicted by how the shopper heedlessly peruses the aisles. Much of the effects are shown in the front-most aisles of the store as well as the shopping cart, like laundry detergent pollution, toxic waste, overfishing, and physical damage caused by single-use plastics to testudines and seabirds. The six-pack ring encloses a turtle that is heavily deformed in the shopping cart and serves as a symbol for its imprisonment. I used the net to trap the fish and clear plastics to show the suffocation of animals like sea lions. The net is torn and represents the effects of overfishing and how it disrupts the food chain. There is a straw lodged in the nostril of the turtle, and examples of plastics throughout the aisles like forks, single-use bags, bottles, and cups. A crab is trapped in a clear cup located next to flooding of the aisle due to effects of global warming and sea levels rising. Around the areas with oil, there is a penguin in between two shelves, unintentionally caught between human-related conflicts, without the means to escape. The other penguin in the shopping cart is choked, wet and slicked down because the oil dissolves the water-repellent qualities of their feathers and causes them to die of hypothermia. The various plastics and nets along with the animals in the shopping cart convey the connections between them. There is also a meat section overstocked with frozen and precut portions, representing how people put their own desires and need over any other species. Water running down between the shelves on the left aisle shows the effects of global warming causing glacier melting and thermal expansion, both contributing to the rising ocean levels. The fact that it runs between multiple levels represents how rapidly its effects take place. The hands of the shopper are covered in blood, representing the impacts of every individual and how they should be mindful of their footprint on the environment.