Bhopal Gas Tragedy

T. R. Chouhan, Indian

Bhopal Gas Tragedy

This is a painting by T. R. Chouhan, a previous MIC plant director at the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal.  Chouhan was always an outspoken critic of the plant and gave accounts of the mismanagement and disregard for safety that ultimately led to 40 tons of toxic Methyl Isocyanate gas being released into nearby communities, killing or injuring hundreds of thousands of people.  Here he depicts this hazardous industry as a demon that has invaded a body and is spreading poison into the environment.  On the right side of the picture plane we can see scenes of destruction and death.  Chouhan continues to try and call attention to the harm this disaster is still causing.  Dow, which now owns Union Carbide, refuses to help the victims or clean up the site and actually promised more investment in India’s economy if the event were to be forgotten.  This tragedy has far reaching consequences: in surrounding communities cancer is common, women continue to give birth to children with birth defects, and the water is contaminated; almost 40 years after the leak itself, these chemicals (and Dow by refusing to take responsibility for the accident) are still harming people. Label by Savannah Singleton

Survival of the Richest

Matt Huynh, US-based Vietnamese-Australian

Survival of the Richest

This is an illustration by multi-award-winning artist and storyteller Matt Huynh, for a podcast “Survival of the Richest” by Douglas Rushkoff (Future Human, July 5, 2018). The podcast told a real story and analyzed how the elite who have the power and financial resources to combat the disastrous impact of climate change would leave the poor behind. The current environment of the venture capital world has shaped the elite’s passive belief in a way that the future is no longer a result of our present-day decision but rather a predestined scenario. Both the podcast and this art piece point out the mindset of individual survival of the elite class, and their ignorance of the issues faced by the poor. Label by Yifei He

Carbon Dioxide Concentration

Simon Lewis, British, born 1980

Carbon Dioxide Concentration, 2014

In the introduction to her book, Artwash, Mel Evans writes that, “The Keeling Curve is an artwork in itself:...each dot signifying a new set of possible challenges” (16). Evans’ assertion that the curve is art in and of itself is a compelling one, if indeed one of the many purposes of art is to generate thinking, the sharp and dizzying uptick at the end of the graph surely leads us to wonder: what happens next? This rendering of The Keeling Curve bears unmistakable resemblance to a supply curve (though, admittedly, there seems to be a bit more fluctuation in Keeling Curve data from year to year than what appears here), in which price and quantity are engaged in a positive (not in the value judgment sense) race towards some asymptote in a/the catastrophic future. Price, which exists on the x axis on a supply curve, is replaced, fittingly, by carbon dioxide concentration in the earth’s atmosphere. Label by Jay Jolles

10 Trashy Ideas About the Environment

Guerrilla Girls, American, est. 1985

10 Trashy Ideas About the Environment, 1994

“I like to use plastic, especially for making art about the environment. After all, art is eternal, and so is plastic.”

Founded in New York in 1985, the Guerrilla Girls are an anonymous collective of women artists who create protest art that exposes sexual and racial discrimination in the art world and beyond. 10 Trashy Ideas About the Environment was created in 1994 and comes from the Guerrilla Girls Portfolio Compleat, a collection of works representing over 30 years of the group’s art activism. The printed plastic bag here lists ten wrongful ideas about the environment, demonstrating people’s ignorance, stupidity, and thoughtlessness when it comes to environmental preservation, conservation, and even art production. By printing their work on a literal plastic bag, the group creates a compelling observation on the irony of art creation, demonstrating how the materiality of art itself can damage the environment. Label by Isabel Williams