Mirabel Wigon
Grissom
2020
Oil on Canvas
72 x 60 inches
These painted structures are a metaphor for our current crumbling urban infrastructure, and indicate our ever-increasing demand and dependency on non-renewable energy resources. I selected this piece because the COVID-19 pandemic is a product of environmental degradation. Although novel viral emergence is nothing new, scientists speculate that population growth, urbanization, and migration results in deforestation that will bring us into closer contact with disease carrying animals. This environmental degradation is due to our increasing consumption and production.