This is about the fourth year anniversary of the Australian bushfires and the week of the LA fires. I reflect on the process of my project, The Weighing of the Heart, a sculptural series of anatomically correct human heart sculptures cast from the ashes of the Black Summer, the most intense bushfire season in Australian history, which occurred from 2019-2020. Each heart measures approximately 11 cm x 8 cm x 9 cm and weighs about 400 grams — slightly more than 331 grams or the average weight of the adult human heart. The extra weight of the heart sculptures when compared with real human hearts represents the heaviness of feeling experienced due to climate catastrophe. View the process of making them here.
Check out this kind article about my work on art and climate on Arts Help. I’m chuffed to be in a publication that believes art is a vehicle for social change. Writer Phoebe Bulotano focussed on my work in Manila and the Amazon Rainforest.
An important correction is that the ‘Seawall’ project is by artist Poklong Anading; I have a minor contribution to the installation in that some of the Apocalypse Project works are in it.
“Founded on the principle of art making the world a better place, Arts Help is the largest digital art publisher, with a community of 20 million members. The United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals serve as the framework that guides the mission of the organization.”
Here are some photos from the !Do Something group exhibition with The Weighing of the Heart, courtesy of the UNSW Library. Thanks so much!
The Weighing of the Heart casts the ashes of the catastrophic Australian bushfires of 2019-2020 into human heart sculptures.
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Exhibition text:
Climate Change is the dominant wicked problem of our time: there is no single solution; the boundaries are difficult to define; and it is influenced by complex, interdependent and rapidly changing factors.
Canadian designer Bruce Mau’s influential book MC24: 24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in Your Life and Work declares that “new wicked problems demand new wicked teams”. In response, the Wicked Collective was established in 2021 by a committed group of academics from the UNSW Faculty of Arts, Design & Architecture (ADA), including Dr Teresa Crea, Dr Rebecca Green, Prof Stephen Loo, Emma Mills and Emma Peters. Wicked Collective believe that artists, designers, academics, and students need to work together across disciplinary boundaries to effectively respond to the wicked problems confronting us. !Do Something is the first project of Wicked Collective. This exhibition presents creative responses and interventions to the wicked problem of Climate Change by showcasing work that relate to one or more of the seventeen United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
!Do Something was shown at UNSW Main Library as part of the ADA Now Festival 2022 from 12 September to 18 November 2022.
Some official photos from the Cultural Center of the Philippines of The Weighing of the Heart, a sculptural series depicting human heart sculptures cast out of the ashes of the Australian bushfires, for the exhibition of the 2021 Thirteen Artist Awards, the oldest government award for artists from the Philippines.
The show runs until 5 June 2022 at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. Visit bit.ly/visit2021TAA for health protocols.
Support for this project includes funding from the UNSW Scientia scholarship and technical support from the UNSW Design Futures Lab.
Critic John Alexis Balaguer of art and design magazine Kanto writes about the CCP Thirteen Artists Awards exhibition and features The Weighing of the Heart. Thank you very much!
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“Catherine Sarah Young’s sculptures of human hearts, The Weighing of the Heart (2022) are cast from the ashes of the Australian bushfires in 2019-2020 and are exhibited wall-bound in grid-form, creating emphasis on the iterative subject. Referencing the Egyptian scene of the weighing of Imhotep’s heart against a feather, the works touch upon notions of grief and loss, and our emotional memories from crises. “The climate emergency will continue to be one of the biggest challenges of our time,” Young shares, “The arts have an important role in creating inclusive spaces for us to process our collective grief with the damage to the planet and to vulnerable communities worldwide.”
“The artist-awardees of the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ Thirteen Artists all exhibit critical perspectives on contemporary challenges in society, from invoking socio-political histories, critiquing structures and systems, listening and giving voice to minorities, exercising climate consciousness, and providing avenues for sharing interpersonal realities. In this time of crisis, one might ask how art might provide reflections, solutions, safe spaces, or possibilities in reimagining a new world–a daunting task for the art community, no doubt, yet readily acceded by thirteen young artists of the new contemporary. With this award and exhibition, more than the showcase is the show of cases, that the world might be presented as it is, so we are able to see art and life as no different. “This year’s artists call into question the very notion of presence,” curator Shireen Seno declares, with a radical evaluation, “this is a show about the gaps, the lapses, and the others that characterize our time.”
Culture², a Toronto-based organization, is hosting their first online conference on community science, creative biology, and ancestral knowledge this Aug 28 + 29, 2021. I’m excited to be one of their speakers. Get your ticket here and see you there!
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This August 28th + 29th, 2021 we invite you to join us for our first conference where farmers, community activists, climate educators, artists, and practitioners will be sharing their wisdom in relation to the pillars of community science, creative biology, and ancestral knowledge.
I’m really honored to have contributed the cover image to this important book on migration and global justice co-edited by my friend Prof. Claudia Tazreiter! I took this image in 2017 as artist-in-residence of Plan International, where I visited youth in Lewoleba in Indonesia; Chiang-Mai in Thailand, and Tacloban in the Philippines. In Tacloban, a local tricycle driver took me around the city to witness the aftermath of Supertyphoon Haiyan that devastated Tacloban in 2013. The image shows a fishing vessel that had run aground Philippine soil during Haiyan.
Working with children and youth who were affected by the climate emergency was one of the most impactful and humbling times of my artistic practice, and I am still grateful to Plan for the opportunity to co-create artworks on climate with them.
The Handbook of Migration and Global Justice is published by Elgar Handbooks and is edited by Dr. Leanne Weber, Professor of Criminology, University of Canberra, Australia and Dr. Claudia Tazreiter, Professor in Ethnic and Migration Studies, Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society, Linköping University, Sweden. This timely Handbook brings together leading international scholars from a range of disciplinary backgrounds and geopolitical perspectives to interrogate the intersections between #migration and global #justice. It explores how cross-border mobility and migration have been affected by rapid economic, cultural and technological globalisation, addressing the pressing questions of global justice that arise as governments respond to unprecedented levels of global migration. Available here: https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/handbook-of-migration-and-global-justice-9781789905656.html
I will be presenting The Weighing of the Hearts and Burned Lines for ASLE-USA’s Emergence/y Conference in a few weeks!
The Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE) seeks to inspire and promote intellectual work in the environmental humanities and arts.
The Weighing of the Heart is a sculptural series where I cast the residues of the bushfires into human hearts.
Burned Lines is a series where I rewrite climate change denier text addressed to me using ink made from the ashes of the bushfires.
June 17, 4-5PM AEST: How can art and science work together to contribute towards sustainability? I’m stoked to give a talk on The Creative Resistance: Art, Science, and Systems Change, and be on the panel on Arts-based Methods for Transformations 2021! I’ll be speaking about my art practice since 2013, and will focus on my PhD work here in Sydney. See you there!
About Transformations 2021: Enabling Positive Tipping Points in an Uncertain World
In 2020 a tipping point may have been crossed on how societies worldwide deal with multiple overlapping crises. On an unprecedented scale we see groups and communities mobilizing to re-imagine and transform the pre-pandemic systems which led to current vulnerabilities, risks, and unsustainable practices. This challenging but also fertile moment calls for urgent knowledge synthesis able to enact positivetipping points and tipping interventions towards new regenerative development trajectories.
Keynote speakers: Jessica Clark – Research affiliate at MIT Open Documentary Lab, publisher of Immerse.news
Kate Raworth – Co-founder of Doughnut Economics Action Lab
Ailton Krenak – Philosopher and indigenous movement leader of Krenak ethnicity, Brazil
Heila Lotz-Sisitka – Distinguished Professor at Rhodes University
Our Entangled Future, a climate fiction anthology of inspiring and hopeful stories, will have two virtual readings this month. I will be reading my olfactory story, The Ephemeral Marvels Perfume Store, for the second event. The series is hosted by cCHANGE Transformation in a Changing Climate and AdaptationConnects at the Department of Human Geography of the University of Oslo. Come spritz your favorite scent while I read you my story!
Series 1: 9:00 -10.30am CEST, Thursday 13 May 2021 (5-6:30PM Sydney) Series 2: 9:00 -10.30am CEST, Friday 21 May 2021 (5-6:30PM Sydney)
Catherine Sarah Young 