Nudity and humanity
Bianca Lee Vasquez – a point where heaven and earth merge and universal healing can occour, interacting between ancient rituals, modern approaches and unconventional views
The meaning of Shinrin-yoku in Japanese: shinrin as in forest and yoku as in bath, in practice, means to bathe in the forest. In studies surrounding forest bathing, immersing the body in woodland triggers the parasympathetic nervous system, which is at the heart of increases in contentment and decreases in cortisol, the stress hormone produced in the adrenal glands. In a study that connects green space to stress, nature is found to heal anxieties, with the absorption of an environment’s visuals and sensations causing a decline in cortisol levels.
Videos of nature were shown to inspire surges of energy to finish tasks and dispel one’s stagnancy, while those who feel the wonder and awareness of nature, display a wane in their biomarker: a medical signaller that may lead to cardiovascular disease, depression, and autoimmune diseases. The biologist, Edward Osburne Wilson, published Biophilia in 1984; an exploration of one’s affinity for nature through the lens of evolution and psychology, which hypothesized that humans foster an affinity towards all life and living systems, a core in Bianca Lee Vasquez’s body of work. Vasquez works in nature, as an artist who cherishes rituals and weaves webs between flora, corporeality and the unconscious to promote and establish bonds with the Earth. «We can change our way of thinking of the living world by perceiving plants with reverence, since they heal us and they give us food to sustain life. If we consider plants, talk to them, imagine what it would be to become like them, then we can nurture a relationship with them, and nature».
The International Union of Geological Sciences, the organization that helms the definition of the Earth’s epochs and time scales, declared Holocene, as the present epoch, starting from the ice age 11,700 years ago. When human activities impacted the planet’s climate and ecosystems, the epoch welcomed the entrance of Anthropocene, the combination of the Greek words anthropo, as in man, and cene, as in new: a term popularized, in 2000, by Eugene Stoermer, a limnologist and leading researcher in diatoms, and Paul Crutzen, a chemist and a Nobel laureate. The Anthropocene Working Group acknowledged the commencement of Anthropocene in 1950 at the Great Acceleration; the influence of human’s imprint on the atmosphere, oceans, coastal zones and land. At the 2015 Great Acceleration of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, it was demonstrated that carbon dioxide concentration had positioned at 399 ppmV (parts per million by volume), an increase of over one hundred ppmV from 280 ppmV; the benchmark, as recorded in the Vostok ice core. The concentration showed that the velocity of carbon dioxide had increased by one hundred times, amassed by urbanization, deforestation and pollution, which accelerate global warming and rock the state of the Earth. To record these fluctuations in the health of the planet and the essence of the environment, Vasquez employs photography, installations and performance to conduct the Anthropocene; dismissing the verb, to sustain, in sustainability as an embodiment of her venture. «I advocate for the Anthropocene, as it moves beyond sustaining the soft-apocalypse and ruining the planet to the point of no return. It exhibits changes that imbibe radicalism». The 2015 compendium by Vasquez, who was born in the United States but whose family originates from Cuba and Ecuador and now lives in Paris, affords a view of the forests in Miami, Florida. In Trees Do Bleed, Vasquez splashes a red pigment, the impression of ochre, along the bark of tree trunks to manipulate the vision of life and blood in the wounds of the trees, to underscore the existence of trees as beings of life. Ilga Zagorska, a researcher at the