Rooted Above the Taiga
My first mural in the USA!
Thank you to East Village Walls for providing the wall and help during my stay.
Rooted Above the Taiga is the title of my mural painted in New York City during my first trip to the USA. It's located on the corner of Eldridge street and Hester street in Lower East side/ Chinatown Manhattan. It might be strange to paint an arctic fox on Manhattan. Why not a more local theme?
The mural depicts an arctic fox which lives far north above the tree line in the arctic tundra. Taiga is a circumpolar biome, an enormous pine and fir forest belt stretching from Russia to Canada and Alaska across Finland, Sweden and Norway. Due to the warming climate the nature in the tundra which is above the taiga is changing and decreasing rapidly. I’m painting the arctic fox as a representative for this biome. It is not (not yet) a threatened species in North America but in Finland it was hunted into extinction and in Sweden it became a protected species in 1928. Despite efforts it is still critically endangered.
Often I read or hear the question, what benefit do we have of species on the brink of extinction? The dominant culture is accepting the loss of species and the destabilization of the planetary systems. It is an anthropocentric way of thinking. There is another side of that question. What is our answer if the entire biomes of the tundra, the taigan and the cryosphere would ask us, what is your reason for being?
/Vegan Flava
2023-06-30
