Art Edition 3, Climate Week, Day 1: Gunay Isayeva
During the past year, with the COVID-19 pandemic social distancing rules interfering with organising physical art shows, artist Gunay Isayeva participated in one group digital art show. Her group art show titled âClean Air for Blue Skiesâ was a registered digital event for UNâs Clean Air for Blue Skies day as well as the London Climate Action Week and was published by the worldâs first climate change museum, The Jockey Club Museum of Climate Change, Hong Kong, Climate Museum UK as well as more than 190 other museums in more than 40 countries around the world.
Gunay brings a versatile style in expressing her views on nature, animals and climate change. With her paintings, she states that we treat nature and animals poorly for our own pleasure. We cut down flowers and kill animals to accessorize the pleasures of our lives. She aims to make her viewers aware of the fact that humans do not think enough about their impact on nature and climate change, to the point of devastating global pandemics where we are forced to confront the realities we have created for ourselves and other living beings of this earth.
But the COVID-19 pandemic has been a wake-up call for drastic action. The collision of this pandemic with a series of recent extreme weather events â such as wild fires, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, cyclones — has amplified this call, providing a glimpse into the scope of the vast challenges lying in store as the effects of climate change become more prevalent and pronounced. Research provides compelling evidence of the extent to which climate change is influencing the evolution of organisms in ways that give rise to human diseases.
In late May 2020, as COVID-19 was spreading rapidly around the World, one of the most powerful cyclones ever, cyclone Amphan, slammed the Indian city of Kolkata in the east coast of India. In anticipation of this unprecedented cyclone, some 3 million people were evacuated into crowded cyclone shelters. Many refused to evacuate out of fear of contracting the virus. Since the hurried displacement of people increases the risk of exposure to the virus, maintaining adequate precautionary measures becomes difficult, if not impossible, as does effective contact tracing of new coronavirus cases among evacuees. The extent to which the virus was able to spread due to the evacuations from this powerful storm in India is yet to be assessed.
Gunayâs group digital art show Clean Air for Blue Skies, Pinelo Art Gallery, will be on display during London Climate Action Week Nov 14 â 20.
To know more about the artist and her artwork, visit her Talenthouse profile.
To share your Covid-19 experience or to publish your articles, stories, poems and artwork, write to us (in āĻŦāĻžāĻāĻ˛āĻž or English) at timesofcorona@gmail.com or use our submission form.
