From ashes to art
Ashes of the burning Amazon
BRAZILIAN artist Mundano has used ash from the burned Amazon rainforest to create a street mural in Sao Paulo of a firefighter standing amid deforestation, fires and dead animals.
“I’m using evidence of the crime,” said Mundano, calling the 1,000-square-metre (10,000-square-ft) artwork on the side of a building an act of “artivism”.
Mundano travelled more than 10,000km (6,200 miles) across Brazil in June and July, collecting ashes from the Amazon rainforest, the Pantanal wetland region, the Cerrado tropical savannah and the Atlantic Forest.
He also met with firefighters and volunteers to listen to their stories.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has struggled to deliver on a pledge to eliminate illegal forest clearing in the Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest, with his calls for more farming and mining instead emboldening illegal loggers.
In August alone, satellites registered 28,060 fires in the Brazilian Amazon, a vital bulwark against climate change because of the vast amount of carbon dioxide that its plant life absorbs and stores, and deforestation rose in September from a year ago.
The data from the national space research agency Inpe showed about 985 square kilometres (280 square miles) of forest were cleared last month, 2 per cent more than in September 2020.
From January to September deforestation edged down less than 1 per cent to about 7,011 square kilometres, an area almost nine times the size of New York
City.
“This mural is a protest, a cry for help,” said Mundano. “I support fire brigades and also for this fire culture to stop, it’s leading us to self-destruction.”