Ellen Chen’s “Fragile”

"A trip to the United Nations in 2019 inspired me to create a series of paintings on the environmental issues happening in our world. The speakers’ empowering words echoed through my head, instigating me to take action: climate change, CO2, global warming. I realized that the climate crisis is a human rights crisis. Corporations and factories are sacrificing the well-being of humanity to selfishly gain profit. I thought back to the times when my family drove past New York City and saw the black smoke against the city skyline with a yellowish, brownish haze surrounding the colossal skyscrapers. My own town had also begun to see the effects of pollution; an increasing number of discarded bottles and plastic bags rolling in the wind along the beach, and dead fish with foggy desolate eyes and rotting flesh falling from its bones deposited onto the banks of the murky river. But when the world was forced into lockdown, a glimmer of hope appeared. The muddy, dreary skies cleared because of the absence of cars and shut down of factories, bringing back the once blue skies. Stopping pollution for even a few months allowed nature to regain its strength. I sat in the auditorium, filled with people, together with the other members of the Big Picture Foundation, an organization dedicated to empowering youth refugees through community-building art programs. In that moment I felt powerful, discussing possible solutions to mitigate the climate crisis. My first painting, “Fragile” was directly inspired by my trip to the UN. “Fragile” depicts a 14-year-old girl in floodwaters up to her neck escaping a disaster that ravaged her village; she raises a broken, soggy box over her head. Inside the box are her two helpless pet pigs, and in the background beside her demolished house, a lone tree is slowly dying, choked by the waters. We see her strong will to live and her unwavering selflessness, as she protects her pet pigs as well. “Fragile” aims to draw attention to how we are creating human-made disasters which in turn are affecting villages that often cannot get help. Far away in distant cities we go about our daily lives, unaware of how our lifestyle practices affect others around the planet. We need to care for our world because this is our only chance.“

·       Materials Used: Acrylic paint, canvas