"The Environment Is in You" Student Photography and Illustration Contest was organized by the global oneness project to have students creatively illustrate the devastating impact of climate change. Instinct was selected as a Finalist and is featured on the organization's website.
Artist Statement
I took this photo after seeing my cat eagerly trying to squeeze her way outside. A block of wood and a brick of marble stood in her way, both man-made obstacles. I initially found this unfortunate dilemma quite hilarious, but then I thought about what had put this cat in this situation. This house pet yearns to be outside, but she has personally never experienced what it is like to be free, roaming her natural domain. Generations of domestication have suppressed the natural instincts and freedom that her ancestors exercised routinely.
She is confined to the life that humans have molded for her. There is no escape, since there is nowhere to go. This idea of captivity is something many of us have experienced during COVID-19, including myself. Nothing is as it was. Like my cat, we were confined to our homes, with the only “nature” being a withering plant by the table that is constantly neglected. Freedom, the ability to wander in your natural habitat, is taken away. Even when things returned to “normal,” it wasn’t the same. I still wear a mask whenever I go outside, and there are still restrictions for everything. And with the horrific alterations climate change has been enacting onto the world, the fresh air and the “natural” weather we experience will eventually become a distant memory in a few years, regardless of COVID. Soon, it will feel suffocating to be stuck in a nature-lacking world slowly deteriorating to the point where it will be safer to hide in houses rather than go outside. If climate change continues at its current rate, the environment that we have known our entire lives will be another one of the past, like the one the ancestors of my cat once lived in. People will long for that ecosystem that they had once lived in, but nothing will be as it was.
I took this photo after seeing my cat eagerly trying to squeeze her way outside. A block of wood and a brick of marble stood in her way, both man-made obstacles. I initially found this unfortunate dilemma quite hilarious, but then I thought about what had put this cat in this situation. This house pet yearns to be outside, but she has personally never experienced what it is like to be free, roaming her natural domain. Generations of domestication have suppressed the natural instincts and freedom that her ancestors exercised routinely.
She is confined to the life that humans have molded for her. There is no escape, since there is nowhere to go. This idea of captivity is something many of us have experienced during COVID-19, including myself. Nothing is as it was. Like my cat, we were confined to our homes, with the only “nature” being a withering plant by the table that is constantly neglected. Freedom, the ability to wander in your natural habitat, is taken away. Even when things returned to “normal,” it wasn’t the same. I still wear a mask whenever I go outside, and there are still restrictions for everything. And with the horrific alterations climate change has been enacting onto the world, the fresh air and the “natural” weather we experience will eventually become a distant memory in a few years, regardless of COVID. Soon, it will feel suffocating to be stuck in a nature-lacking world slowly deteriorating to the point where it will be safer to hide in houses rather than go outside. If climate change continues at its current rate, the environment that we have known our entire lives will be another one of the past, like the one the ancestors of my cat once lived in. People will long for that ecosystem that they had once lived in, but nothing will be as it was.