Felicidad De Lucas’ work immediately resonated with me. In her artist statement she speaks about wanting to investigate and visualise “what (are) human beings feeling in the face of a changing environment” and “depict(s) a world in which humanity can’t be separated from the environment and vice-versa” which is very similar to the aim of my own project (De Lucas, 2020). Creating images that show this interconnection of humans and the earth forms the basis of my work. De Lucas’ achieves this with a set of photographs of wild desert plants wrapped or entangled in sheets of plastic.

In her series she seeks to identify “the collective paradox of being aware of the environmental asphyxia that plastic waste creates, yet being massively dependent on this material as a society” (De Lucas, 2020). Her images appear ambiguous as they show the omnipresence of plastic pollution very clearly yet in an aesthetic, almost elusive way. I particularly liked De Lucas’ style of lighting which highlights both the textuality of the plastic as well as the object underneath it.

In her Artist Statement she further writes “the Earth and humanity are inextricably entwined, and a balanced relationship with it is crucial to our physical and emotional well-being” (De Lucas, 2020). This focus on the transfer of the earth’s suffering onto us humans is another point I seek to contextualise in my work as well. I want to apply this in a more literal way, using a human and our often complicated expressions in the face of ecological crisis.

I used her photos as a source of inspiration before shooting the images for the ‘plastic’ theme of my project. Instead of the plants though, I positioned the human body/face into the frame, entangled and suffocating under the floating weight of a plastic sheet.

Reference:

De Lucas, F. (2020) ‘How Soon Is Now?’ Felicidad De Lucas [online]. Available at: http://www.felicidaddelucas.com/how-soon-is-now [Accessed 31 March 2020].