My creative project is inspired by the idea of multi-directional eco memory, as proposed by literature scholar Rosanne Kennedy. Through globalisation and our heightened interconnectivity, the inherently multi-directional nature of the contemporary period is very much in keeping with a general inability to grasp the scale of climate catastrophe. Indeed, visual cultures have long struggled to convey this grave reality; as Stacy Alaimo states, “in the dominant visual apparatus of the Anthropocene, the viewer enjoys a comfortable position outside the systems depicted”. My portraits are of two species, the Andaman Treepie and the Corncrake, reflecting the geographies of my own mixed cultural heritage. Both species are facing extinction, and my portraits challenge the role of the obituary and question one’s agency in memorials. The drawings are purposefully missing parts of each body, emphasising the devastating loss of these species, ahead of time of their status changing from ‘endangered’ to ‘extinct’.

Alaimo, Stacy. “Your Shell on Acid: Material Immersion, Anthropocene Dissolves.” In Anthropocene Feminism, ed. Richard Grusin (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2017) 92