Through the visions of the two women at the centre of the painting, Lucid Chaos depicts a somewhat innocent, yet earnest, outlook on society. Painted in times of global uncertainty, this first capsule captures abstract wonders, worries and questions about our contemporary systems of consumption.
Since the dawn of the first industrial revolution, our economic systems and consumption habits have been driven by our burgeoning obsession with growth, expansion, and extraction. By following the linear approach of ‘take-make-waste’, our hyper-consumption has generated obscene amounts of waste, toxicity and greenhouse gas emissions. The Earth has entered a new geological epoch where humans dominate our planetary system, called the Anthropocene.
Despite scientific and technological advances in how to alleviate our impact on the climate, current collection methods and sorting schemes within the realm of mass production are not yet developed enough to manage the volume of waste we produce. The most rational solution would be to simply consume less. Considered a political, economic, social and environmental movement, the term ‘degrowth’ refers to minimising our use of the world’s resources and energy to drive well-being instead of profits.
To tackle the overconsumption epidemic, our approach and relation with the planet will have to change drastically. Through its utopian interpretation of the world, Lucid Chaos calls for the redesign of our systems and processes in hope of incentivising slower production and consumption practices. However, we must come together, and as ‘demand makers’, demand changes through our consumption choices. So what is it going to be: DESIGN OR DISASTER?
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