Exhibitions — Rochelle J. March

ON EARTh

We live On Earth. We live in the best place we could possibly imagine. Everything we could possibly need is here; everyone we could possibly love is here too. There are colors, warmth, bird calls, wind, snowflakes, fruit and sunshine. Why do we continuously seek separate worlds – through distraction, materialism, fanaticism and divisive belief systems – that continually distant ourselves from each other and from our planet?

To live On Earth today is a complicated affair, especially because it is dying. Over half of the world’s plant and animal species have suffered negative impacts from climate change (1), with 450 plants and animals gone completely extinct due to warming temperatures and their rapidly changing ecosystems (2). This era – a tiny sliver of earth’s history – has been named the Anthropocene (literally human-influenced time) as earth enters its sixth mass extinction of life in the past half-billion years. However, instead of this die-off being caused by an incoming asteroid or erupting volcanoes, it is caused by us.

On Earth explores the beauty, sadness and joy of earth’s treasures as an ode to the planet’s deep intelligence and our love for it. While often taken for granted, our home is the most valuable thing we have and deserves to be respected and understood. Only when we accept that we are a part of earth can we understand that we are meant to live with it, rather than exploit it for our own microcosms – digital, material, religious or otherwise – that will always pale in comparison to its complexity.

This is a pivotal time in our history where we can decide to protect our planet, and by doing so our shared future, or remain stuck in an inability to see the wondrous possibility in each other and in our place here, On Earth.