Paul Jackson, American
Fowl Language, circa 2010
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill is just one of many catastrophes resulting from BP’s oil and natural gas extraction and refinement operations. Oil spills cause a multitude of harms to nonhuman creatures, including the death of waterfowl. Images of birds slicked in oil are often used to critique or bring attention to the harms of oil spills, but Jackson flips the mold by painting a diverse array of waterfowl and other seaside birds taking their revenge on the oil conglomerate BP. This shifts the narrative away from viewing nonhuman animals as pitiful or passive, giving them agency in a cross-species fight against environmental degradation. Label by Jordan Hadlock