Luz Angela Ashook Castro
Juan Pablo Mantilla Vega
This artwork possesses several elements, each one of these have a meaning in the painting related to the main topic; pollution. First, the main component we see is the woman with long hair and tearful eyes, representing the mother earth in pain for all the damage she’s receiving.
Second, the spine and ribs with flowers, our bodies are not able to function properly without essential parts like these, just like mother earth can’t live without nature because of how important is this for her existence.
Third, the hands surrounding the woman and pointing her, even threatening her with the sign of a gun, they symbolize the acts of humankind against mother earth integrity, we can also see that some of these hands have certain items like a crucifix (no matter what you believe in, you also harm the planet) or a sleeve that seems to belong to a coat made of some animal skin (People damage the nature for not pertinent reasons like wearing unnecessary clothing made of animal’s skin). And fourth, the footsteps over the whole painting, these exemplify how people step on nature causing irreversible damage.
These elements, along with the main color of this artwork (red), which make the painting look like a warning to whoever sees it, pretend to portray the damage that powerful institutions, companies, and governments around the world cause against nature when they explode natural resources instead of using them wisely, irreversibly harming the earth and leading humanity to unending consequences and suffering.